the feds raid a journalists home with a warrant for firearms.. and leave with personal docs that id her sources. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...-reporters-home-confiscate-confidential-docs/ http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013...-dawn-raid-on-reporter-home-raises-questions/
I know you're trying to be smarmy, but it's overreaching when it's illegal. The Washington Times is going to sue them, for all the good it does.
Intentionally in order to get revenge on the people who embarrassed them. The divider-in-chief has really done alot for the us vs them mentality. the reports that got their panties in a bunch happened under Bush, but I don't remember anything like this happening during his Presidency. it seems to occur quite a bit under prez o. bureaucrats gone wild.
WHO IS GOING TO STAND UP FOR OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS? Constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley: âThe painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be. Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an âimperial presidencyâ with unilateral powers and privileges. In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble, accomplishments... Obama has not only openly asserted powers that were the grounds for Nixon's impeachment, but he has made many love him for it. More than any figure in history, Obama has been a disaster for the U.S. civil liberties movement. By coming out of the Democratic Party and assuming an iconic position, Obama has ripped the movement in half. Many Democrats and progressive activists find themselves unable to oppose Obama for the authoritarian powers he has assumed.â http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/03/25/nixon-has-won-watergate/2019443/ See also: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/14/is-obama-worse-for-press-freedom-than-nixon.html *********************************************** http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-10-10-02-45 REPORT: OBAMA BRINGS CHILLING EFFECT ON JOURNALISM BY BRETT ZONGKER ASSOCIATED PRESS "In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press," wrote Downie, now a journalism professor at Arizona State University. "The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate." Downie interviewed numerous reporters and editors, including a top editor at The Associated Press, following revelations this year that the government secretly seized records for telephone lines and switchboards used by more than 100 AP journalists. Downie also interviewed journalists whose sources have been prosecuted on felony charges. Those suspected of discussing classified information are increasingly subject to investigation, lie-detector tests, scrutiny of telephone and email records and now surveillance by co-workers under a new "Insider Threat Program" that has been implemented in every agency.
If something like this happened under Bush, you can bet the press corps would be screaming for impeachment at the top of their hypocritical lungs. Someone in the White House, maybe not Obama, but someone like VJ saw the gain from exposing sources and sending a message that you cannot hide if you're a whistle blower. They saw this gain vastly outweigh the risks associated with an illegal search and seizure.
No doubt. iirc, during Bush's term, someone leaked info to the NYT and W personally called them and asked them to not print the story as there were concerns that it might put lives in danger. they did it anyway.. I never heard of feds wiretapping NYT offices or raiding NYT reporters' homes. I think you're risk/reward statement is correct as well. But one has to wonder, if they really have the balls to do this on their own or are being directed to do so. Once or twice it might be believable that they acted independently but with the IRS targeting, wiretapping, and investigations of high profile journalists, can it really be coincidental that these agencies all just now decided to start violating long standing American tradition (and LAW)? imo, no chance.