American
politics has entered a truly surreal phase. For once, liberals and
conservatives are united in their anger over the DOJ’s surveillance of the
Associated Press and investigation of FOX News reporter James Rosen, and
rightly so. In addition, as Glenn Greenwald points out in his latest New York Times editorial, “The administration of Barack Obama has
prosecuted more accused leakers under "espionage" statutes than all
prior administrations combined -- in fact, double the number of all prior such
prosecutions.”
The
same Obama who talked about greater transparency in government during his first
campaign for President is now employing Soviet style suppression tactics to
make sure the only news that’s reported is government approved. This goes way
beyond fighting terrorism. It is a blatant program to intimidate critics and
punish those reporters who dare challenge the administration’s policies.
To
reiterate a point I’ve made before, it was the post 9/11 Bush administration
that opened the Pandora’s Box of executive prerogative in the name of fighting
terrorism that has led to the abuses we are seeing today in Washington. Instead
of repudiating and rescinding Bush’s blatant overreach of Presidential power,
Obama has embraced it, expanded on it and taken it to new levels of secrecy and
persecution.
We
can’t call ourselves a democracy under these circumstances. If we don’t allow
our press to speak truth to power, we are no better than any other totalitarian
regime.
Unless
Obama makes some drastic changes to the laws governing the surveillance and
treatment of reporters and whistleblowers, we will continue slipping into a
very dark and surreal episode in American history where the truth is the enemy
and freedom a distant memory.
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