I recently published a column on how Barack Obama has publicly assumed many of the powers that were once cited as the basis for the investigation and attempted impeachment of Richard Nixon. One of those areas was the Obama Administration’s crackdown on journalists. This week Attorney General Eric Holder appears to have yet again added to this ignoble record. It appears that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press. This disclosure follows another recent disclosure that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeted conservative groups associated with the Tea Party. Yet, once again, most Democrats remain silent in a type of cult of personality where principle is discarded in favor of loyalty to the President.
The spying on reporters by the Obama Administration included outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters. The seizure covered general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn. The Justice Department showed no restraint or concern, even including the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. It now appears that in a few years historians could well be saying the Nixon was perfectly Obamaesque in his abuses.
AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt has written a letter to Holder objecting to the spying, noting that “[t]here can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters.” I would be equally upset with the mere fact of the spying as opposed to its breadth.
The spying may be part of a criminal investigation into a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. AP agreed to hold the story after an objection from the Administration but ultimately ran the story disclosing a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States. While working with the Administration in holding the story, the Administration apparently was moving to spy on five reporters and an editor who were involved in the story.
Holder would have to have personally approved the subpoenas under Justice Department regulations. However, it is not enough to again criticize Holder (who has assembled one of the most abusive records on civil liberties in our history). Obama is well aware of the objections by civil libertarians and personally approved such decisions as promising CIA officials that they would not be investigated for torture and the kill list policy.
What is most striking about this story is the sense of complete immunity and lack of concern shown by the Administration. That sense of impunity has developed over four years as Democrats have gone into radio silence over abuses by the Administration from Obama’s “kill list” policy to other rollbacks on civil liberties. There will come a day when this president is no longer in office and many Democrats and Liberals will be faced with the imperial presidency that he created in the hands of someone they do not revere. When that day comes, it will be hard to climb over the mountain of hypocrisy to find a principled ground for criticism.
Source: CNN
Gene,
Perhaps when the populace understands that war is illegal. Yes, war is illegal. It is the law as specified in the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Read about it and how it came about in “When the World Outlawed War” by David Swanson
You are most welcome, bettykath.
thanks, Gene.
Blouise,
Grand juries have been mentioned here before and like you I think it’s a good idea, however, more than likely it would have to come in form something closer to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission like those used in South Africa and Chile.
Blouse,
One can speculate on many fronts…. There were statesmen and stakemen running very unabashed at the same time…. One can wonder which direction this country would have taken if Burr had been (s)elected…. Instead of Jefferson….
James Knauer,
“I really wanted to answer your question, too.”
Well, sadly, you did, which doesn’t mean that your initial suggestion of grand juries lacks merit. In my opinion, it is one of the best suggestions presented on this blog. I am afraid though that the appointment would have to involve a conspiracy of “ends justifies means” characters.
Blouise: Here is the link on “sniper fire.”
An excerpt: “She [Hillary] said when she arrived in Bosnia on March 25, 1996, “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
But news video footage of her arrival at Tuzla shows Clinton, then the first lady, calmly walking from the rear ramp of a U.S. Air Force plane with her daughter, Chelsea, then 16, at her side. Both Clintons held their heads up and did not appear rushed.
The video shows Clinton spending several minutes talking with the group, including an 8-year-old Bosnian girl who presented her with a poem, and later greeting U.S. troops.
Clinton has mentioned the sniper fire at least twice earlier in the campaign, including in December in Dubuque, Iowa, before the caucuses in that state.
Here is a link with the video.
**** Back to Tony:
The issue is, she flat out lied. The entertainer Sinbad was with her, as was Sheryl Crow. After the story broke, Sinbad was interviewed on tape, and said he remembered the trip, and they were not told any such thing (about sniper fire at Tuzla Air Base). If memory from five years ago serves me, Sinbad said the only unusual thing they were warned about was that once they cleared the mountain, it required a very steep descent to get to the airfield, so to not be alarmed by that, and that descent is what they were joking about once they landed.
Gene,
I hear that “M” word coming your way soon…… Lol
“As for speculation on Hillary? I wouldn’t vote for her under any circumstances and it has nothing to do with her plumbing and everything to do with the lack of content in her character and her penchant for the expedient actions over the principled. ”
Louder, please. It is still early enough for the Hillary-fever to be broken. Then again, the way Obama is going, he may do it for us.
Blouise, it will be someone from this sea of disaffect:
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_lanier_the_internet_destroyed_the_middle_class/
ap,
Ah, … one doesn’t … 😉
Blouise asks, “I like that idea but who would appoint the Special Prosecutor?”
Well, this is the problem. Is Nelson Mandela available? All of our institutions have failed us, so from what pool do we draw? There are no longer any outside operators. It would have to be someone brought up in the digital age, an eviscerator of lies simply by calmly repeating a citation.
I do not mean to be in any way be ageist. It’s about a mental embrace more than anything, it just happens to be age-biased in 2013. But I still deal with a lot of real fear in some of my clients over 50 who have had their largely paper-based business models work all their lives SO DON’T FUSS WITH IT! And they are being left behind as a result. How can a person such as Mitt Romney, for example, not realize every bloody thing he said would be recorded in pristine condition forever?
Same with GWB when he admitted in front of a televised audience that he gave the order to torture and said he would do it again. Absent consequences, all who come after that are utterly doomed.
So who among us has the credibility to wipe that smug, arrogant look off our faces and begin to dismantle our war forever during a police state for profit?
I really wanted to answer your question, too.
Blouise 1, May 14, 2013 at 11:45 am
nick,
You didn’t ask me but I’m not shy … I’d vote for Hillary in a heartbeat
—-
Could have been more specific.
http://youtu.be/8BfNqhV5hg4
How does one get past the ‘”sniper fire” issue?
What mespo and raff said.
As for speculation on Hillary? I wouldn’t vote for her under any circumstances and it has nothing to do with her plumbing and everything to do with the lack of content in her character and her penchant for the expedient actions over the principled. She’s every bit the corporatist shill and lying hyper-political self-serving opportunist as our last five Presidents. There isn’t an ethical bone in her body. More of the same is more of the same. That’s not an acceptable option anymore. However, that being said, barring a breakout third party option, we are likely to face another round of non-choice.
Nothing will happen at this point by bending the system back into shape. The system likes the personally profitable shape graft has made it. Corporatists no matter their party affiliation don’t work for We the People.
What happens to things that do not bend?
(That was for you, Blouise. :mrgreen:)
too
anonymously posted
Blouise,
How does one get past the ‘”sniper fire” issue? (…asked from a position of respect, of course.)
————————————————————
A little to oblique … which “sniper fire” issue?
nick spinelli
Blouise, Are you speaking of the Texas Twins? LA mayor? It would be tough for loyal, woman Dem voters to accept taking a back seat for a black prez, then Latino prez, don’t you think? Women sucked it up for Obama, I doubt they would do it again.
——————————————————-
Women voters, at least in my experience which is somewhat wide thanks to my years of membership and presidency in the League, don’t vote for candidates because they are female. If gender comes into it, the issue is where a candidate stands on “women’s issues”. Women didn’t suck it up for Obama. If you’ll excuse the following … that’s a man’s take.
Glenn Greenwald’s take:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/justice-department-ap-phone-records-whistleblowers
Justice Department’s pursuit of AP’s phone records is both extreme and dangerous
The claimed legal basis for these actions is unknown, but the threats they pose to a free press and the newsgathering process are clear
by Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday 14 May 2013 10.21 EDT
Excerpts:
The key point is that all of this takes place in the ongoing War on Whistleblowers waged by the Obama administration. If you talk to any real investigative journalist, they will tell you that an unprecedented climate of fear has emerged in which their sources are petrified to talk to them. That the Obama administration has prosecuted double the number of whistleblowers under espionage statutes as all previous administrations combined has already severely chilled the news gathering process. Imagine what message this latest behavior sends to journalists and their sources: that at any moment, the phone records of even the nation’s most establishment journalists can be secretly obtained by the DOJ, which has no compunction about doing so even in the most extreme and invasive manner.
…
It is true, as Kevin Drum suggests, that the DOJ has been obtaining phone records for quite some time in this manner, and that the angry reactions to this story are accounted for by the fact that, in this case, the targets are establishment journalists rather than marginalized Muslims or dissident groups. But there are unique dangers from having the government intrude into journalists’ communications with their sources, which is what happens when they obtain their phone records in such a sweeping manner. At this point, leaks from government sources are the primary way we learn about what the government does, and the more that process is targeted and the more those involved are intimidated, the less it will happen. That, of course, is the point.
Despite how stunning the breadth of this invasion is, none of it is really surprising. But it does underscore just how extreme of a climate of fear has been deliberately imposed by the Obama administration on the news gathering process. As the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer told whistleblower advocate Jesselyn Radack last year:
“When our sources are prosecuted, the news-gathering process is criminalized, so it’s incumbent upon all journalists to speak up.”
What the Obama DOJ is doing in all of these cases is not just an attack on investigative journalists and their sources, though it is that. It is, first and foremost, an attack on you: specifically on your ability to know what government officials are doing in the dark.
End of excerpts
http://youtu.be/pPa1egjdEpA