Tuesday, May 14, 2013

New York Times Editorial, "Spying on The Associated Press": The Buck Doesn't Stop Here

Before reading the most recent New York Times editorial entitled "Spying on The Associated Press" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/opinion/spying-on-the-associated-press.html?_r=0), have a look at Dana Milbank's Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Obama, the uninterested president" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-obama-the-uninterested-president/2013/05/14/da1c982a-bcd7-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html?hpid=z2). Milbank writes:

"President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency.

Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters.

And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their ideology: He responded as though he were just some bloke on a bar stool, getting his information from the evening news.

In the phone-snooping case, Obama didn’t even stir from his stool. Instead, he had his press secretary, former Time magazine journalist Jay Carney, go before an incensed press corps Tuesday afternoon and explain why the president will not be involving himself in his Justice Department’s trampling of press freedoms.

'Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the Associated Press,' Carney announced."

Or stated otherwise, "The buck doesn't stop here."

Or better still, as Peter Seller's Chauncey Gardner stated in "Being There": "I like to watch."

Now back to the Times editorial, which would have us know:

"The Obama administration, which has a chilling zeal for investigating leaks and prosecuting leakers, has failed to offer a credible justification for secretly combing through the phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press in what looks like a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers.

. . . .

For more than 30 years, the news media and the government have used a well-honed system to balance the government’s need to pursue criminals or national security breaches with the media’s constitutional right to inform the public. This action against The A.P., as the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press outlined in a letter to Mr. Holder, 'calls into question the very integrity' of the administration’s policy toward the press.

. . . .

The Justice Department is pursuing at least two major press investigations, including one believed to be focused on David Sanger’s reporting in a book and in The Times on an American-Israeli effort to sabotage Iranian nuclear works. These tactics will not scare us off, or The A.P., but they could reveal sources on other stories and frighten confidential contacts vital to coverage of government."

Or stated otherwise, we don't care if the president goes to sleep while al-Qaeda besieges, murders and sodomizes the body of an American ambassador and then lies about the identity and motives of the attackers (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/05/david-brooks-next-scapegoat-benghazi.html).

And we don't give a damn if the IRS illegally targets conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status.

But step on our toes? No way, Jose. We're tough guys. You can't bully us.

The second-term Obama administration is being rendered dysfunctional and even an object of Jon Stewart's ridicule by this onslaught of scandal.

It would be funny were it not for the fact that America has yet to emerge from a disastrous economic downturn and is facing monumental challenges around the globe from the likes of North Korea and Iran.

Thank goodness, Obama is at the helm . . . not. This detached narcissist, prone to procrastination, probably still thinks he's one of America's greatest presidents. His closest aides tell him so, every day.

It just can't get worse . . . not.

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