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WASHINGTON — The CEO of the Associated Press told an audience Wednesday that the Department of Justice has succeeded in muzzling government employees from talking to AP reporters in the weeks since the seizure of AP phone records was revealed. “What I learned from our journalists should alarm everyone in this room and I think should alarm everyone in this country. The actions of the DOJ against AP are already having an impact beyond the specifics of this particular case,” AP CEO Gary Pruitt told an audience at the National Press Club. “Some of our longtime trusted sources have become...

Does it? Should we believe the OMB's numbers that legalizing 15 million illegals will add $179 billion dollars to the U.S. economy over the next 10 years, and $700 billion over the next 10 years after that? Should we believe Menendez? How accurate was the Office of Management and Budget on what OBAMACARE would cost? I would like to see how much faith Rubio, McCain, Graham and others - be they conservative hosts on television or on talk radio - put in the numbers that the OMB supplied concerning legalizing 15 million illegals. Should they believe Menendez? The New York...

CNN's Christiane Amanpour has a staunchly liberal track record, so perhaps it's surprising that she was so candid about the Obama administration overseas like she was in Morocco on Thursday.

The US government's secret seizure of Associated Press phone records had a "chilling effect" on newsgathering by the agency and other news organizations, AP's top executive said Wednesday. "Some longtime trusted sources have become nervous and anxious about talking with us," AP president and chief executive Gary Pruitt said in a speech to the National Press Club. "In some cases, government employees we once checked in with regularly will no longer speak to us by phone. Others are reluctant to meet in person ... This chilling effect on newsgathering is not just limited to AP. "Journalists from other news organizations...

Shortly after the news broke that the Department of Justice had been secretly monitoring the phones and email accounts of Associated Press and Fox News reporters (and the parents of Fox News Correspondent James Rosen), CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson said her computer seemed like it had been compromised. Turns out, it was: "A cyber security firm hired by CBS News has determined through forensic analysis that Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts. While no malicious code was...

Lost amidst the White House he-said-she-said of finger pointing, scandal, incompetence, venality, hubris, vanity, error, greed, gluttony, embarrassment, cover up, stupidity,  amateur bungling, brownnosing, grandstanding, photo-opting and hearings as the result of a few minor mistakes made by the Obama administration- an administration which rode roughshod over a several outdated laws, certain small parts of the Bill of Rights written by irrelevant white dudes; an administration that got people killed, violated civil rights, harassed government employees, ignored it’s basic responsibilities and common sense- are these small, little, niggling details: The folks in charge are freaking hypocrites; and because the are...

The national media have evinced some outrage over the Obama Justice Department's aggressive persecution of investigative journalists. But not enough. It is more important to help President Hope and Change overcome the legacy-strangling notion of an "atmosphere of scandal" than to investigate a scandal that is strangling their very profession. On Sunday's "Face the Nation," New York Times editor Jill Abramson claimed to be very concerned about the leak probe, but proclaimed of all these scandals that, "I'm just not sure, you know, they come together and create, you know -- quote, unquote -- 'an atmosphere of scandal.'" Even worse...

In each of the three major scandals that have recently rocked the Obama administration, the hunt is on for smoking guns. Armed with subpoena power in the House of Representatives, the GOP is going after the administration — for its secret seizures of journalists’ phone records, the IRS persecution of conservative nonprofit groups, and the Benghazi fiasco — and it smells blood. Alas, the hunt may well prove fruitless; it may emerge that no laws were broken. But even if no laws were broken, the scandals’ common theme is a casual abuse of government power. The pattern of abuse is...

Diced eagle, diversion of crops to ethanol production, slow-walking of nuclear projects… Last week the Associated Press ran an astonishing story about how America’s windmills have been killing thousands of rare birds, including golden eagles, while getting a free pass from the Obama administration. Here’s the way it appeared in the Washington Post: The Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind farm for killing eagles and other protected bird species, shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret, an Associated Press investigation has found. More than 573,000 birds are killed by the...

Make no mistake: by criminalizing James Rosen of Fox News for asking government employees to give him information, the Obama administration is suppressing the ability of the press to do its job. It is so egregious that even the New York Times, normally sycophants for Obama, is alarmed. The editorial board today writes: With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible "co-conspirator" in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news. And the Times, a member/owner of Associated...

President Obama knows he's in trouble when Andrea Mitchell—Andrea Mitchell!—proclaims the IRS and AP scandals to be among "the most outrageous excesses I've seen" in all her years in journalism [which pre-date Watergate]. The strength of Mitchell's statement drew gasps from Scarborough and Brzezinski. Then Ron Fournier, former AP editor now with the National Journal, darkly described the White House being "consumed" if it turns out someone there or in the Obama campaign had been aware of the IRS targeting of conservative groups. It happened on Morning Joe today. But hey, President Obama still has his hangers-on. Take good old...

President Obama’s second-term campaign slogan was “Forward,” but instead we’ve got cover-ups, congressional investigations and the government persecution of political opponents and reporters. That sounds like “backward” to me. All the way to, say, 1972. Who would have guessed that just a few months into his second term, President Obama would be compared to Tricky Dick. And by a liberal Massachusetts Democrat — U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano. Republicans could not even have scripted this one. The agency most hated by voters, the Internal Revenue Service, admits to going on a Nixonian witch hunt against Tea Party and conservative groups during...