From Time Magazine:
It’s not even theoretically possible to surpass the degree of Republican hypocrisy on this issue. Recall that many of those howling about the Obama administration’s (probably legal) investigation are the very same people who did nothing but cheer when the Bush administration, in the name of “national security,” pursued a program of warrantless wiretapping that trampled on federal law.
First prize for sheer chutzpah regarding this matter goes to House committee chair Darrell Issa, who immediately issued a press release condemning the DOJ investigation, and calling for a congressional investigation, even though in 2007 Issa was one of just a handful of House members who voted against a bill that would have made investigations of this type illegal (the bill was successfully killed in the Senate by Issa’s GOP colleagues). Although we won’t know for certain until more facts are revealed, it’s quite likely that the DOJ is correct when it asserts that rummaging through two months of office, home, and cellphone records of reporters on a fishing expedition for information regarding the confidential source of a story is something that the law as currently written allows the government to do.
Over the course of the last dozen years (that is, ever since the commencement of the latest in our never-ending series of wars) Congress and the courts have given the executive branch nearly unlimited power to protect Americans from the dangers of a truly free press, and in particular the “danger” of the media having access to un-intimidated confidential sources inside the government, who can reveal what our leaders are up to without fear of having their identities revealed to those leaders.
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/15/doj...#ixzz2TV4iRp9n