Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Op-ed: Playing tit-for-tat...Obama's war on journalism


Op-ed:
Playing tit-for-tat...Obama's war on journalism
By: Diane Sori
 
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees, among other things, that government shall NOT infringe upon the freedom of the press (which infers by today's standards to include all the news media...TV, radio, the web, etc.)...the Fourth Estate...that the press is NOT to be subject to censorship by the government. In other words, the government does NOT have the right to try to control or block anything from being published by the press or to prevent the expression of ideas before they are published.
But yesterday, coming on the heels of last week's AP scandal, news broke that the DOJ, in an affidavit which including a statement by FBI agent Reginald Reyes, stated that there was evidence that Fox News's chief Washington correspondent James Rosen broke the law, and is now facing charges as a probable 'co-conspirator' in a criminal spying case.

Now here's where it gets just a little too coincidental...a little too tit-for tat...what the DOJ is referring to happened back in 2009 and the Obama administration is suddenly bringing it to light now...bringing it to light to try and deflect attention away from the AP scandal...a scandal that might very well lead all the way back to the White House and its usurping occupant.

So in revenge...in an attempt to divert attention off Obama himself...this miserable administration is now trying to criminalize reporting...while trying to hide the fact that in the past this administration has used warrantless wiretapping and records seizures to identify who is talking to whom.

And while privacy laws and protections limit searching or seizing a reporter’s work, using the excuse 'but NOT when there's evidence that the journalist broke the law against unauthorized intelligence leaks', the DOJ got a federal judge (a liberal Democratic I'm sure) to sign off on a search warrant, and seized massive amounts of information about reporter James Rosen by claiming Rosen is, "at the very least, either an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator" in a 2010 espionage case against State Department security adviser Stephen Jin-Woo Kim.

To date, Rosen has NOT yet been formally charged with a crime per se, but Kim, who handed over a classified government report to Rosen that said North Korea would probably test a nuclear weapon in response to a UN resolution condemning previous tests, was charged in 2010 with violating the Espionage Act of 1917, one of six cases in which the Obama administration began to use the first World War-era spying law to prosecute suspected government whistleblowers.

In other words Kim was a whistleblower, and any and all whitleblowers, and those who help them in going against the Obama administration, have always been targeted for revenge for one must NEVER criticize the 'anointed one' or his minions.

And what did Rosen do for the DOJ to label him a 'co-conspirator'...he simply reported the story and NOTHING more...reported it in an online article about US intelligence official warnings that North Korea would likely respond to US sanctions with additional nuclear tests.

Like that wasn't a given with the unstable man/child Kim Jong-un in control of North Korea...that really wasn't earth-shaking news or news that warranted the targeting of a reporter doing his job.

Addressing the charges, in a statement released yesterday, FOX News called these accusations 'downright chilling' after the actual details surfaced about the FBI obtaining a warrant, but a warrant in possible violation of regulations governing such seizures, and seized all of Rosen's correspondence with Kim, and also seized Rosen's phone records tracing the timing of his calls to Kim. They also used Rosen's government issued security badge access records to track his comings and goings to and from the State Department, and obtained an additional search warrant for Rosen's personal e-mails.
All this went way above and beyond what the DOJ did when they seized the AP's records, where they looked at phone records but NOT at the actual content of the e-mails...at least as far as we know or have been told.
But we really can't believe anything this administration tells us...now can we.

And all this was done to Rosen simply because the man was doing what reporters do...report...and reporting what the msm refuses to report...the truth.

So what the recent AP scandal and now this one with Rosen shows is that the actions of the out of control, Constitution-trampling Obama administration are raising serious concerns about the gag-order tactics placed on these types of investigations, denying the press their right under the First Amendment to exchange information between reporters and their sources unimpeded by government interference...for if sources cannot give information to reporters without fear of reprisal what is the alternative...the only alternative, the one Obama and his minions so desperately want is for the media to write and report what the government, meaning Obama, tells them to write and report.
And that is something 'We the People' can NEVER allow to happen.
http://thepatriotfactor.blogspot.com/2013/05/op-ed-playing-tit-for-tat.html

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