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Jewish World Review
May 15, 2013/ 6 Sivan, 5773
It's raining cats, dogs and scandals
By
Jay Ambrose
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Please, please, there's no reason to impeach President Barack Obama and it is overreach to say we're getting Watergate all over again. But the scandals are indeed piling up on each other, or, to use another metaphor, it's not just raining. It's pouring. And the message to the nation is to take cover.
First, of course, we recently heard convincing congressional testimony about how Washington had been informed about what was really happening in Benghazi, Libya, before the administration's dupe-the-public, win-the-election charade of sending U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice out to tell a different story on TV shows.
Then came revelations about some in the Internal Revenue Service seeming to think special attention should be given to the tax status of especially perilous organizations, those that are, you know, shudder, shudder, conservative.
Now it turns out the Justice Department has engaged in what the president of the Associated Press has called a "massive, unprecedented intrusion" into his organization's operations.
We're not talking small stuff here. We're talking about federal snoops gathering up records of two months of calls on both office and home phones of more than 100 reporters in bureaus in Washington, D.C., New York City and Hartford, Conn. This is a sledgehammer swing at press freedom as guaranteed in the First Amendment, but let's go slowly, noting first that a far more limited quest may possibly have been justified.
Back in May of last year, the AP learned that the CIA had spoiled an al-Qaeda plan to observe the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden by detonating a bomb on a plane. The CIA intercepted an IED in Yemen, and that was that. But the CIA did not want to announce the success, telling the AP it would be announced later but that it would dangerous to announce it immediately. AP waited a while, then went with the story.
While the government would not say why it examined the records obtained from phone companies, it had said previously that it was investigating the AP story. It was apparently seeking the government source of the classified information.
The Obama administration has been tough on this score, prosecuting more people accused of leaking classified information than all other administrations put together, AP reports. And while I am myself persuaded far more is classified than needs be, I don't think it's OK for some government worker to decide on his or her own that it's OK to ignore the law in any particular case.
That said, an AP story notes that the Justice Department itself has strict rules that such press investigations should focus only on relevant material because broad searches would intervene with the freedom of reporters to investigate and report. This was an inexcusably broad search, causing the American Civil Liberties Union to talk about a "chilling effect on journalists and whistle blowers." AP's president, Gary Pruitt, said the records search could possibly reveal other confidential sources and activities the government has "no conceivable right to know."
One does not arrive at a more charitable view of this phone record romp by an educated guess that the Obama administration's main reason for classifying the incident was that it pointed to a still active al-Qaeda.
It seems, after all, that an effort to make everyone think terrorists were not the danger they used to be was behind the phony, baloney trick of trying to make everyone think the Benghazi horror was a consequence of a spontaneous protest caused by an anti-Muslim American-made movie.
You may remember, too, how top administration officials were accused in the first term of themselves leaking classified information that made President Obama look good, one of any number of seeming abuses insufficiently explored by some of the liberally inclined in a news industry now being abused itself.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.
Previously:
05/08/13: Grads, heed Jefferson, not Obama
05/01/13: Letting planes fly on time
04/24/13: How about having a poetry century?
03/28/13: TV news can give you the blues
03/20/13: We're upside down and debt crash is coming
03/13/13: Stock market is downright perky. Blame the corporations
03/06/13: Bloomberg rivals Carrie Nation
02/27/13: The Wily One is proving in polls that it's no toughie to fool lots of people most of the time
02/20/13: On Obama, swans, goulash and invisibility
02/13/13: Drones and hypocrisy
01/30/13: The Nixonian Obama
01/23/13: Is Obama making JFK-style mistakes?
01/02/13: Kerry nomination emblematic of woes coming
12/26/12: Hollywood beats Harvard in history?
12/12/12: Immigration issues solve themselves
12/06/12: Durbin's deficiency
11/29/12: Man of the century
11/21/12: A big scandal coming?
11/14/12: U.S. should follow the Swedish path
11/07/12: Hanging from a poll
• 10/31/12: A dream that wouldn't come true
• 10/29/12: When the 'kooks' and 'racists' turn out to be your ideological allies
• 10/24/12: The pettiness refuge
• 10/18/12: An interruption that tells a bigger tale
• 10/17/12: A recovery that wasn't
• 10/12/12: Big Bird squabble points to something real
• 10/11/12: The 'war' you don't hear about --- the one on average Americans
• 08/22/12: Obama leadership: Romney's returns trump road to recovery
• 08/15/12: Saving Medicare the Ryan way
• 08/01/12: Combatting free speech
• 07/25/12: Good and bad reactions to Colorado horror
• 07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
• 07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
• 07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
• 07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
• 07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
• 07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
• 06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
• 06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
• 06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
• 06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
• 06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
• 06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
• 06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
• 06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
• 05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
• 05/23/12: Student loans fail students
• 05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
• 05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
• 05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
• 05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
• 05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
• 04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
• 04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
• 04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
• 04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
• 04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
• 04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
• 04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
• 04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
• 03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
• 03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
• 03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
• 03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
• 03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
• 03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
• 03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
• 03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
• 02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
• 02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
• 02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
• 02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
• 02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
• 02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
• 02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
• 01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
• 01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
• 01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
• 01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
• 01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
• 01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
• 01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
• 01/04/12: How America smothers itself
• 12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
• 12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
• 12/21/11: A tale of two men
• 12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
• 12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
• 12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
• 12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
• 12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
• 11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
• 11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
• 11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
• 11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
• 11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
• 11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
• 11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
• 11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
• 10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
• 10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest —- or at least shouldn't be
• 10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
• 10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
• 09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
• 09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
• 09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
• 09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
• 09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
• 09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
• 09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
• 09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
• 08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
• 08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
• 08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
• 08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
• 08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
• 08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
• 08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
• 08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
• 08/03/11: The people who may save America
• 07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
• 07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
• 07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
• 07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
• 07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
• 07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
• 07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
• 07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery
© 2011, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
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