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
p.s.
And just a question about WordPress…
… If they lose a posting, can we petition the NSA for a copy?
Lastly, as I’ve said before and I will repeat as often as it takes…
… It appears that the Office of the President of the United States of America needs to be Impeached. Not JUST the last two, or three occupants (depends on how and who you count) but the amass of POWER the Office has gained through an abjectly careless Congress.
Let THAT be my epitaph on my grave stone, if it must!
How does one obtain recorded phone conversations when it is required to have a warrant to record them, in the first place?
Now I know the times have “changed”, some say for the better (Bankers) some say for the worse (mom&pop shops) and how 9/11 “changed” everything yada, yada, yada… However, just like with torture, when did spying and data recording on Americans personal activities become an all American activity worth believing in? Ok, ok, Patriot Act and National Defense (re)Authorizations signed, etc. are what is at the root of continued threats by our own Government on the very foundation, The Bill of Rights, our Constitution hinges upon?
I didn’t know that it is now favorable to impinge upon the Bill of Rights through secret acts, memos, or Legislation. It’s as if it’s become American to assault certain aspects of the Bill of Rights for “political” reasons. Why else did Homeland Security collaborate with local Police in spying on Occupy movements around the Nation?
Remember once when it was NOT favorable to use political motives to spy on people or groups? Nowadays I wonder, why was Nixon run out, again?
Gene,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YAcoDkj_dI
and g’night. 🙂
raff,
You’re welcome.
And LK wins tonight’s “Paying Attention” Award.
anonymously posted, that article brings back some memories. The pundits loved the picture but it just disgusted me. Ugly war, ugly man, ugly lie, ugly picture. Bah, humbug.
nick spinili: ….”Don’t go for the shiny objects that guys like O’Donnell throw out to distract.” He’s a professional pol spinmeister. …. Replace tea party and Jewish groups; ones you dislike, w/ groups you do like.The chickens alway come home to roost.”
***
More like chickens HAVE come home to roost. I actually recall that a couple of Republican administrations had the IRS doing their dirty work- I remember Nixon and the NAACP/Greenpeace being looked at.
I’m not as distracted by shiny objects as might be thought. I assumed that the IRS was motivated by the obvious corruption (as O’Donnell pointed out- the built-in corruption) of the 501(c) 4s and the fact that tea party 501(c) 4’s were proliferating like rabbits on viagra. I don’t have to be lawyerly because I’m not one, I’m a commoner. As such it just strikes me that knowing the way say, Americans for Prosperity (which is a 501(c) 4 run by K. Rove and funded in goodly part by the Koch Brothers) worked I would be inclined to look closely at applicants that had “Tea Party” and “Patriot” in their name if I worked for the IRS. Those are politically loaded, Republican and right-wing activist labels. I’d take a real close look at those.
I actually don’t think this is the BIG story, it’s too inside the beltway. It’s like watching the battles between the red ants and black ants in Sim Ant. The problem isn’t the IRS, it’s the law itself and nothing will be done regarding that so this ‘controversy’ is just a waste of time. I see people on TV talking about how this is such an important story because if the IRS isn’t independent and above reproach in its actions people will lose respect for integrity of the whole tax system. I just chuckle at that. Literally. The whole system of tax laws is so corrupt and political that it has no integrity and only fools would respect it to begin with. That’s what I liked about the O’Donnell segment, it didn’t deal with the superficialities but went to the corruption built into the law itself.
The big story is the frontal attack on journalism; the DOJ’s secret investigation/subpoenas of AP’s phone records. IMO.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/harry-reid-irs_n_3274166.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Gene,
Thanks for your efforts and Nal’s efforts to clean up the spam filter and to correct the lost postings!
nick,
That isn’t math its arithmetic! 🙂
WordPress is fair and balanced. I have to state what I said in piglatin to get by WordPress here to demonstrate their fairness. I called Hilary a itchBay for complaining about Monica. In the same tome I called Bill Clinton a astardBay for cheating on Hilary and denying Hilary the cigar in favor of Monika. WordPress censored both words. One can employ much worse words than those two about those two people but WordPress is sensitive about women and equally so about men who father children out of wedlock. But when it comes to dogs WordPress does not relent. A female dog is a itchBay. One who complains is itchinBay. We have onedog in our dogpac with that name and WordPress will not give a release just for her. She is thinking about a name change.
SWM, Great clip! After listening to Lerner I went back to the USA Today report. I was wrong. They quoted Lerner about the 300 total and 1/4 being tea party. “I’m not good @ math”.. but the new score is now 75-3. Of course, that’s what she said to a reporter when she was on the spot. You know it’s not any “better” than that, and maybe worse. My bad on reading the USA Today. I booted a routine ground ball.
lottakatz 1, May 14, 2013 at 6:25 pm
How does one get past the ‘sniper-fire’ issue?
Probably the same way one got past the ‘mission accomplished’ issue.
***
10 years ago, already…
Ten Years Ago: Bush Declared ‘Mission Accomplished’—and the Media Swooned
Greg Mitchell on May 1, 2013 – 8:11 AM ET
http://www.thenation.com/blog/174127/ten-years-ago-bush-declared-mission-accomplished-and-media-swooned#
Today marks the tenth anniversary of Mission Accomplished Day, or as it might better be known, Mission (Not) Accomplished Day. Sadly, it comes amid another upheaval in sectarian violence in Iraq—two days ago The New York Times warned of a new “civil war” there—and a week after the attempts at Bush revisionism upon the opening of his library. We’re also seeing aspects of the run-up to the Iraq invasion playing out in the fresh, perhaps overheated, claims of chemical weapons in Syria.
In my favorite antiwar song of this war, “Shock and Awe,” Neil Young moaned: “Back in the days of Mission Accomplished/ our chief was landing on the deck/ The sun was setting/ behind a golden photo op.” But as Neil added elsewhere in the tune: “History is a cruel judge of overconfidence.”
Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in the media coverage of the event.
On May 1, 2003, Richard Perle advised, in a USA Today op-ed, “Relax, Celebrate Victory.” The same day, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq—with the now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner arrayed behind him.
Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” He added: “Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple.”
PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a—on a carrier landing.”
Bob Schieffer on CBS said: “As far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time.” His guest, Joe Klein, responded: “Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me.”
Everyone agreed the Democrats and antiwar critics were now on the run. The New York Times observed, “The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.”
Maureen Dowd in her column did offer a bit of over-the-top mockery, declaring: “Out bounded the cocky, rule-breaking, daredevil flyboy, a man navigating the Highway to the Danger Zone, out along the edges where he was born to be, the further on the edge, the hotter the intensity.
“He flashed that famous all-American grin as he swaggered around the deck of the aircraft carrier in his olive flight suit, ejection harness between his legs, helmet tucked under his arm, awestruck crew crowding around. Maverick was back, cooler and hotter than ever, throttling to the max with joystick politics. Compared to Karl Rove’s ”revvin’ up your engine” myth-making cinematic style, Jerry Bruckheimer’s movies look like Lizzie McGuire.
“This time Maverick didn’t just nail a few bogeys and do a 4G inverted dive with a MiG-28 at a range of two meters. This time the Top Gun wasted a couple of nasty regimes, and promised this was just the beginning.”
When Bush’s jet landed on the aircraft carrier, American casualties stood at 139 killed and 542 wounded. That was over 4,300 American, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, fatalities ago.
Gene, I’m building a case. Check the spam filter, and I’m sorry for the hassle.
Thanks again, Gene. WordPress must be bias against organ meats? Let’s see. Haggis..haggis, haggis. I love haggis in the morning, I love haggis for lunch, I love haggis for dinner and midnight snack.
Thanks to whomever checked on wordpress.
SWM, Hopefully you know me well enough by now to know I’m not a partisan. I’m upfront and candid, I don’t like or trust Hillary. I truly look @ stuff through a nonpartisan eye, no matter what parties tit is in the wringer. The Obama administration is looking like a Daley Machine administration. I am willing for the facts to come out. As iconoclast said, they will drip out. However, that is the worst way to handle a crisis. You need to get ahead of a crisis.You need to get the facts out on yourown terms. Carney thinks the press are still his buddies. Obama has been the darling, but now the bloom is off the rose and he is in for a shitstorm.There’s blood in the water. Good chance the Republicans will overplay their hand, and when they do I will say it. They have w/ the impeachment horseshit, but that seems to be just a few..SO FAR. This will be a marathon, not a sprint. We need to pace ourselves.
nick,
I was just in there doing a little light spam scrubbing, noticed your post and put the fix in. Apparently the spam filter does not like you. It seems to be tagging you a disproportionate amount. It must have taken all that tripe talk between you and mespo personally.
nick, You are right. It does look like they looked far more heavily at the right.
911…911, Please check the spam filter. Thank you.
SWM, USA Today has ~300 tea party organizations being scrutinized. I read the Bloomberg article, so that makes the score 300-3. I wouldn’t want to hang my hat on those numbers, but apparently you do. I would love to bet on football against you.