By Scott Tibbs, May 18, 2013
On Rachel Maddow's television program, she pointed out that the reason the Obama Justice Department was allowed to snoop around in the Associated Press' phone records is because there is not a federal shield law that would prevent it- blocked, naturally, by those dastardly Republicans. Maddow also pointed out that Obama supported and sponsored a federal shield law when he was in the Senate and running for President.
Do I really need to connect the dots here?
Obama could have simply issued an executive order instructing federal law enforcement not to look into journalists' phone records without following the procedures he claims to support. That could be repealed by the next President within hours of taking office on January 20, 2017, so Obama could continue to support legislative protections for journalists. But there is nothing preventing the Obama administration from voluntarily restraining itself between now and 2017, and there was nothing preventing Obama from implementing the voluntary restrictions before his administration snooped through the records.
The issue is not the lack of a federal shield law. The issue is Barack Obama's rank hypocrisy. This was painfully obvious to me while I was listening to this segment, and it was highly amusing that Maddow could not (or more likely would not) connect the dots.
