This just in -- blogging and actual newspaper reporting don't mix. So I'm outsourcing commentary to this mystery pundit -- can you name him?
Prosecutors examined Rosen’s phone records, read his e-mails and, using the electronic record left by his security badge, even tracked when he entered and left the State Department building. How did officials justify such snooping? By asserting in an FBI affidavit, according to The Post, that Rosen broke the law “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”
A persistent theme here these last four years has been that the right-wing media machine would rather go to crazy places like President Obama's birth certificate than report on the real, honest-to-goodness scandal of his administration -- his sweeping overreach on matters he classifies as national security, whether it's targeted drone assassinations, even of U.S. citizens, or trying to throw an unprecedented number of whistleblowers into prison.
The problem is that as long as you invoke the "forever war" that was formerly known as "the global war on terror," there is no measure that is too authoritarian for Republicans' liking. Hence, we saw the bizarre scenario of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- who's been very open that his mission in life is to take down Barack Obama -- refusing to criticize his Justice Department's sweeping, unprecedented and overbroad investigation of the Associated Press. Hard as it is believe, right wingers actually hate the AP and its Pulitzer-winning watchdog journalism more than they hate Obama.
This is the greatest picture in Philadelphia Daily News history -- although I can't decide if it's because of the woman flipping the bird at front and center or the "Federal Illuminati Detention Center" graffiti in the background.
By the way, free the Philadelphia 5 -- this is your overreaching federal government in its pointless war on drugs, which is what it does when it's not locking away 82-year-old nuns or going after Fox News reporters (more on this last one in a minute).
Imagine this -- it is forty years ago (that would be 1973, if you're not good at math) and you are sitting down at your Smith-Corona manual typewriter to try your hand at writing science fiction. Your idea: a "Mad Max"-style dystopian vision of America in the near future. You pick the year 2013, and your write up a plot summary, starting out something like this:
In the year 2013, America has lost its dominance as the world's great manufacturing power. And so the great cities of the Heartland have gone to seed -- entire blocks are re-taken by prairie grass, weeds growing where once vibrant factories is stood. The epicenter of rot and decay is Detroit, once the auto capital of the world, now de-industrialized and overrun by murder and political corruption.
Last week I told you that the case of the AP phone records -- the most serious and disturbing matter in the trifecta of so-called Obama "scandals" -- would die on the vine because Republicans, in spite of their ill-disguised hatred for the president, hate an aggressive free press even more.
This guy! He's passing Sinatra (and fictional Underwood) as my all-time favorite Francis:
Pope Francis has hit out at unbridled capitalism and the "cult of money", calling for ethical reform of the financial system to create a more humane society.
So I take one unpaid furlough day and this happens? Flyers' goalie Ilya Bryzgalov went all Philly.com commenter on us? Let's look at two of the things he said in the interview that may (more on that in a minute) end his career in our fair city: First. the comment that you (not me) might sign onto (warning -- some of Bryz' words were really translated and some others only went through Google Translator). It's on Philly and "ghettos":
There are enough of them. This is not a small part of the city. Too many do not work, live on welfare and get food stamps for. They just do not want to work. Their principle is: "Why should I work when I can live, let them raise taxes on the rich, which are injected. I'll sit on the dole, the year I will get it here, then move to another state - start getting there.
Last night I told you that I find the Justice Department probe of the Associated Press to be troubling, creepy, even Nixonian, a word I don't toss around lightly. Having had 24 hours to reflect, my opinion on that front has only hardened. Of the three (at least that was the number last time I checked) swirling Obama scandals that have bowled over the Beltway 500, I see these matters as different from each other as night and day and...another night. The Benghazi "scandal" is a joke that is melting away faster than the Wicked Witch of the West The IRS scandal is highly troubling (although a diversion from the more important issues of Big Money in politics...as most political scandals are a diversion) and demands a full-blown investigation, not that there's any chance of that not happening at this point, with this gang in Congress.
As for the AP scandal, this one continues to bother me the most -- not just because of the underlying facts, but because it crystallizes the things that have troubled me about Obama's presidency from early in his first term -- the broken promises on less secrecy and more transparency, the all-out war on whistleblowers, and a hostility to "unfettered" investigative reporting, no matter how many times that Jay Carney says otherwise.
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