How to win Friends

[woodchip]

Well with the Benghazi incident and the IRS Brou ha ha boiling over, you'd think the Obama Administration would want to keep the newsies on their side. You be thinking wrong:

"The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news. "

"The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. "

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05 ... e-records/

Yup, this ought to keep them pesky reporters under control. As our very own slickster would say, "What a bunch of loons".

[Will Robinson]

Aren't employers allowed to listen in on their employees at work?

[callmeslick]

I thought the press was in their pockets......which is it?

[woodchip]

Aren't employers allowed to listen in on their employees at work?

Well if you mean the reporters are the administrations employee's...then yeah.

[woodchip]

I thought the press was in their pockets......which is it?

If they were they won't be anymore.

[Will Robinson]

I thought the press was in their pockets......which is it?

I guess you never heard the story of the scorpion and the frog.

[Foil]

I'm actually a bit surprised the Republicans aren't going after this story harder. Unlike the Benghazi "he said / she said / who knew what when" mess, this story is straightforward, clearly a massive overstep of power, has been admitted to, and is downright scary in its intention.

[Will Robinson]

I'm actually a bit surprised the Republicans aren't going after this story harder. Unlike the Benghazi "he said / she said / who knew what when" mess, this story is straightforward, clearly a massive overstep of power, has been admitted to, and is downright scary in its intention.

I think they are just as focused on it as Benghazi but they don't need to be as loud about it because 1) they don't have as much info on it yet, and 2) they don't sense a reluctance on the media to dig into it as was so evident with Benghazi.
In the end I'm sure they will surely try to draw as much political blood out of both situations as they can.

[CUDA]

honestly I don't think they'll need to "yet" it's not wise to bite the hand that feeds you

[woodchip]

A quick check shows both CBS and NBC are carrying the story.

[woodchip]

Additionally it is interesting to read what Obama's hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune, has to say. The editorialist, Cal Thomas, is hardly a conservative wag:

"Journalists should stop protecting President Obama and Hillary Clinton and do their jobs, like Sharyl Attkisson. Congressional Republicans should press for all the facts. That's their job."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/colu ... 996.column

BTW Sharyl Attkisson is a CBS reporter who's bosses were bitching at for being too aggressive in her reporting on Benghazi. Too aggressive? Really?

[Tunnelcat]

Even MSNBC was on the story last night, so the liberals are smelling the stink now. Either Obama is guilty of allowing his Justice Department to do this, or there are still rogue Bush appointees trying to nuke his presidency. Jon Stewart said it best, that at the very least, Obama is guilty of "managerial incompetence".

First off, with the IRS scandal, the head of the IRS that allowed, or initiated, the probing of tea party groups, Douglas Shulman, was a Bush appointee. Did he have a agenda? Probably. Did he oversee the the attacks on the tea party, you betcha, "wink, wink". Did he do it for less than honorable reasons? Only he knows, but I'm guessing he's not a loyal Obama player.

Now with the DOJ AP scandal, we don't know yet who initiated that one.....yet. If it was a lower level Bush appointee, or Eric Holder himself, Obama is going to get the blame either way. I fault Obama for NOT cleaning house when he first came into office. When Bush came in, he purged everyone under his authority right down to the civil service level, a thorough cleaning. It was the perfect strategy for a long term strategy of screwing any Democratic president if they ever came into power. Yes, I know all presidents did this, but they rarely did it to the level that the Bush/Rove crew did. Most of them are still there at their jobs NOW too, like little termites eating at the house's walls.

So Obama is now getting torn down from within his own administration, probably only because he didn't bother to thoroughly purge the old Bush infestation. Managerial incompetence. It's either that, or he's just another dirty politician abusing his power, which is also possible. I'm going to wait to pass judgement at the moment. The dirt always creeps out from under the rug, so I'll see who it eventually sticks to. I'm not going to follow the Republican hit parade at the moment. They have an agenda too, get rid of Obama at all costs, so their intentions are less than honorable.

[Spidey]

I can hear it now…as the red giant reaches out to extinguish the last vestiges of life on this planet….

The final human voice was heard to mutter…Damn you George Bush!

[Tunnelcat]

Well, he ranks right up there, or is it down there.

http://theweek.com/article/index/243205 ... ident-ever

But if you go to his Presidential Library and take the "Decision Points" game, you'll get an eyeful of history rewritten.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us ... -1.1389318

And if you want to actually watch this little game in action, take a gander, if you can get past who posted it, not that it matters since the video is of someone else playing it.

[youtube]9t8OHSyGGY8[/youtube]

[callmeslick]

seems that the Obama admin was just pursuing leaks of high-level classified documents, in this case relating to a possible Al-Queda plot.

[Tunnelcat]

That's what I heard too. But even though spying on the press by the DOJ using these new extraordinary powers is bad precedent, it's LEGAL. So conservatives and liberals alike need to quit their whining. Those extraordinary powers were given to the DOJ and the President by........THE PATRIOT ACT. Power once given will be difficult if not impossible to ever take back.

http://abovethelaw.com/2013/05/why-is-a ... ted-press/

[callmeslick]

yup,TC....I don't like it too much, either, but what was done here was completely legal and in no way an attempt to squelch the press.

[woodchip]

yup,TC....I don't like it too much, either, but what was done here was completely legal and in no way an attempt to squelch the press.

Legal maybe but when you consider how many reporters went to jail to protect their sources, I don't think they will view it in quite the same way as you do.

[vision]

So wait, is the AP an Obama puppet of not? I thought they were the liberal media? Golly, I can't keep up with all these changes!

[Spidey]

It’s my opinion that most of the bias in the news media happens after the wire services.

[CUDA]

It seems to me that if they wanted to catch a leaker then they would start taping the phones of their own employees first, not going after the ones that broke the story.
I think they stepped in it with this one, probably not a good idea to piss of the press, unless there was another motive like trying to intimidate them to get in lockstep.

[Will Robinson]

It seems to me that if they wanted to catch a leaker then they would start taping the phones of their own employees first, not going after the ones that broke the story.
I think they stepped in it with this one, probably not a good idea to piss of the press, unless there was another motive like trying to intimidate them to get in lockstep.

I bet when the congress wrote the Patriot Act they gave themselves an exemption so it is still illegal to tap their phones.

Another big advantage to tapping the phones of all the reporters is you get to hear all the congressional underlings who make those calls to the reporters who speak off the record tipping the reporters off about dirty deeds trying to get the reporter to investigate their opponents.
So the administration would have a warning on incoming smear campaigns against them and they could discover details about oppossing congressman that could be used to leverage them to give support in exchange for keeping that knowledge secret.