Picking on the Wrong Victim

By Robert Knight

As a long-time, ink-stained wretch, I’m actually glad that some of the Obama Administration’s bombs targeting our essential liberties found their way out of the Tea Party kill zone and were dropped instead on the Fourth Estate.

Most of the media are the Obama Administration’s most loyal constituents.  In fact, they may be the most loyal constituents after the reliable voters in Chicago’s cemeteries.

A liberal administration targeting the media? It’s like giving the dog that’s been biting your opponents a swift kick in the head. The dog doesn’t like it.

By seizing the phone records on 20 lines used by as many as 100 Associated Press reporters, and by treating Fox News reporter James Rosen like a criminal defendant, the Justice Department has managed to get much of the media sore at them.  Even the leftist Huffington Post has a May 30 column by Jonathan Turley calling for Mr. Holder to be fired.

The harassment of Mr. Rosen was so nosy and personal that you’d think it was the IRS running amok instead of the Justice Department.  The Administration probably thought they could get away with it because Fox is disliked by the rest of the so-called mainstream media. Although not perfect, Fox has more balanced coverage and is whaling the tar out of its competition in ratings.

In any case, a line was crossed and the media have taken notice.  Mr. Rosen, who had been breaking stories on North Korea’s nuclear threats, had his personal e-mails seized and was named as a possible “criminal co-conspirator” simply because he, like any good reporter, had elicited information from a government official. It’s no crime, unless you’re spying for a foreign country.

This past week, it was revealed that the government obtained records for several Fox bureau phone numbers and even a line that matches that of Mr. Rosen’s parents.

Spy novelist Mary Louise Kelly writes in The Atlantic that if you tried to peddle this scandal as fiction, book editors would dismiss it as too far-fetched.

“It takes an unusually egregious misstep by an administration to unite journalists from Fox News and Mother Jones in outrage,” she writes. “But that's what the Rosen affair has accomplished.”

 
Last week, CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson said her computer has been “compromised” for more than two years. She doesn’t know who is responsible but doesn’t rule out the Justice Department. 

Read more.  

Posted on June 4, 2013 at TeaPartyUnity.org