On his show last evening, Mark Levin read from the transcript of an interview then-Senator Barack Obama gave to Alan Colmes on June 28 2006, in which Senator Obama — in discussing the Bush Administration’s criticism of the New York Times for publishing leaked classified information — concluded that the press shouldn’t be molested or pressured by government and should be left alone to do its job. That is, the post-partisan Senator publicly condemned the Bush Administration for trying to influence the way media reported, noting that the secrecy of the Bush administration in some ways justified the release of information meant to harm it.
I can’t find the link or audio at this point, but the takeaway from this interview is that the Obama of the Senate — the 2006 Obama critical of the Bush Administration’s worry over the leak of classified information (as well as their use of Gitmo, rendition, waterboarding, etc., all while defending Murtha and Howard Dean) — is at remarkable odds with the Obama of the presidency, whom Senator Obama must also necessarily condemn for allowing President Obama’s AG to tap the phones of AP reporters in a broad and sweeping surveillance of the news gathering organization.
And the reason our President is seemingly at odds with himself is simple: because the Obama of 2006, and 2008, and 2012, is — despite early attempts to paint him as a post-partisan, post-racial pragmatist, a new breed of faculty lounge president with a fine pant crease and a working knowledge of contemporary postmodernist and postcolonialist jargon, a good man who wants to do what is best for the country as it was founded and is hip and fresh and historic — is exactly the same Obama as we have today, the only difference being that the mask is slipping, the weight of the lies is becoming too much for the rhetorical foundation to hold, and he’s being exposed for the wannabe-despot he’s always been.
Which seems relevant somehow.
If any of you can track down the audio or the transcript, post it in the comments here, please. I still have no access to email, so I apologize if you’ve written me and I haven’t written back.
the press shouldn’t be molested or pressured by government and should be left alone to do its job.
They always criticize you for what they plan to do, if they aren’t already doing it.
W.H. on AP probe: Obama ‘firm believer’ in press freedom
He’s also a firm believer in surveillance and kinetic problem solving from on high.
“Press Freedom”
They keep using those words. I do not think they mean what they think they mean.
He was also outspoken about the increased debt during the Bush administration as well. So, you know. People have short memories and the media has thus far been reluctant to help them out.
Carney is back in high-handed mode at the presser.
“Clearly you are all a bunch of idiots who cannot understand that all of this (Benghazi, IRS, AP scandals) is a witch-hunt driven by Republicans (*spit*) on the Hill who won’t merely take The One’s Word about these foolish matters and about which I can’t be assed to answer.”
Barry 2013 can’t be held responsible for the actions of Barry 2006. Barry has “evolved.”
Link to 2006 piece about the interview.
It was also mentioned in a David Limbaugh column.
These insouciant reversals seem to run in the Chicago family.
Most especially when they get away with the first infraction.
President Obama, under fire from civil libertarians for the seizure of journalists’ telephone records, is endorsing a federal shield law for reporters seeking to protect their confidential sources, aides said Wednesday.
“The president has long supported media shield legislation,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
Don’t reporters get to DREAM (Act) too ?
“He also supports auditing the shit out of anyone who gets out of line,” Carney added.
This is kinda fun: The Tea-Party IRS Scandal: A Facebook FAQ
Including John Stewart’s take on the thing.
So what. This analysis employs faulted logic. We logician-types call this sort of thing quod tunc erat hoc nunc est fallacy, that was then this is now. It covers everything.
White House releases 100 pages of emails and notes on Benghazi.
ben gazi’s emails pdf
IRS Source: Cincinnati Told to Lock Down Data
ulstermann
BREAKING: Obama White House Just Caught In HUGE Lie/Contradiction – See Proof Here.
this might be the audio maybe I do not listen to this mark levin person is he staunch?
oh i see you want the stuff from 2006
We other logician types call it public inconsistency, and we make hay out of it.
– When that Dem commitee woman asked him about spying on womans emails I thought he was going to shit his pants.
GLENN BECK — WAS RIGHT !!!
So they release the “emails” as a 5th gen photocopy turned into a pdf image. So as to make searching through it tedious and turning the image by OCR into digital text problematic. Assholes to the end.
proggtardia will find him a new gig
Scapegoat Alert: Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller Resigns
So now the agency doesn’t even have an interim scapegoat. Forward the blame to the standard substitute.
@geoffb, the better to hide the edits, my dear – A Big Bad Wolf strategy
Director of IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations Office is Obama Donor
Miller Claims He’s Only Leaving the IRS Because His Term Ends In June
Note that the earliest “Benghazi email” in that dump is dated 9/14.
We’re presumably supposed to believe that no one was talking about it for three days.
i can’t find the stuff from 2006 there’s lemon tart in the kitchen though
it’s super buttery
i don’t understand how this whole IRS abuse of power fiasco doesn’t make it ridiculously awkward for food stamp to continue his endless pursuit of job-raping tax increases
he really shoulda thought of that ahead of time huh
maybe the portman should come clean on shulman
Portman to Obama: Come Clean
That’s because by the 14th they had the talking points coalesced around the idea that this was an outgrowth of the Cairo protests of the video and were working to play down the talk Islamic terrorist involvement. See page 11.
we need some special prosecutors
this is a mess
a big unholy fascist mess
shameless fascists are notable for their lack of shame
china is more funner than here with the fascists
they have giant quacks and plus an exciting future ahead
whereas we have fascism and decline
it’s disheartening
A good piece over at Red State”:
BTW, we seem to have lost our preview widget… or is it just me?
lost our preview widget?
Not just you John, but others as well.
– Miller wasn’t even at the IRS when all this was going on. He was “acting” head after the fact, and due to resign in June.
– Just another blame avoidence move. Holder throws Cole under the bus. So the WH is all in to damage control, proving once again that not one of the bastards gives a fig for America.
double down on proggtardia
Report: Susan Rice’s promotion to National Security Advisor ‘definitely happening’
– Why not. She’s a dependable liar, and besides dah sistah knows where dah bodies are burried.
– Yes, the preview is gone, theres a weird script on the top of the log-in page, and last night for a time the site was innaccessable.
– Server hiccups?
see here the fp fu
Will Benghazi furor keep Susan Rice out of the White House?
You really trust Eric Holder (or whomever Congress would empower to appoint the Special Prosecutor) to pick somebody who’ll get to the bottom of this mess?
What we need is Congress to exercise its oversight function. And if Boehner won’t do it, then the House needs new leadership.
I won’t waste any pixels on the Senate.
special prosecutors tend to pussyfoot around too
in truth I guess we mostly just need to eradicate our propaganda slut infestation
my sense though is this is leading to a definite and pronounced suppression of people’s appetite for hillary clintontrash
if Team R were smart they’d raise her profile right now in any way shape or fashion they could
give her a goddamn leadership award if they have to
link
I could be completely wrong or off base, but my sense of the original scheme of the framing would have the Framers now staring at us with their arms crossed across their chests, consternation on their faces, and their toes impatiently tapping the ground, waiting for us to act.
the boehnerdouche action figure has limited range of movement
i think the big winner here who’ll capitalize on all this in his own sweet time isn’t even a republican it’s porky porky chris christie
Also glaring and shaking their heads. Franklin heaves an exasperated sigh. Adams sneers.
Yeah, stuff just like that is right. Disgust wouldn’t be out of the question at this late date. But the solutions, I think they’d say, are still in our hands. Doesn’t mean we’ll do the right thing, but that we alone have the opportunity to do the right thing.
the AP thing though is appalling
Obama bought and paid for them and they were his personal propaganda sluts fair and square but apparently one or several of them abused his trust and were doing things he didn’t like
and remember this all happened well after the propaganda Associated Press sluts had addicted food stamp to their services and he’d become very very honestly dependent on them
now they’re whining cause they got caught scheming and Holder had to use his pimp hand on them
what did they fucking think was gonna happen?
they didn’t think at all is what happened
Over on an earlier thread there’s a claim one of the wiretaps was set in the House cloakroom.
I need to buy more popcorn.
it’s all just part and parcel of the more general decline of america Mr. Slog
our department of justice is shit
our internal revenue service?
shit
our president?
shit
our congresswhores?
shit
our media?
shit
Jessica Alba?
dumb as a fucking box of rocks
Breaking: Holder Justice Department Also Tapped House of Representatives Cloak Room
how does this Nunes guy know the cloakroom was tapped?
did hugh not think to ask?
really?
that’s kind of… incurious
“how does this Nunes guy know the cloakroom was tapped?”
yellow pikachus are next for posting on the anti baracky site
oh happyfeet you dissed obama once
i do not understand what you mean
not missing a beat here’s what is in the prime teaser position on the National Soros Radio homepage tonight
Hoft is too stupid for me to take anything he posts at face value. I hope it’s true though.
No it doesn’t. Maybe years to put a round on center consistently, but not putting a round on the target.
i dunno Mr. Ernst National Soros Radio sounds pretty darn confident
Also kinda depends on what the ‘something’ is. A Buick LeSabre? Relatively easy. A playing card? Decidedly trickier.
BTW, a tweep correctly points out that no phones were ‘tapped’ anywhere * — phone records of who called who and when were seized. This is a point we should all remember from 2005 or whenever, when the Left were falsely claiming that Bush was ‘tapping’ all of our perfectly legitimate and ordinary calls to Islamic Terrorists in Yemen. Hoft should not make that same mistake.
—
* Well, until the news comes out tomorrow that not only did the DoJ tap the HoR Cloakroom phones for realsies, but they also secretly installed a live webcam in the crapper.
Though granted, it’s this Rep. Devin Nunes that is incorrectly tossing the ‘tapped’ word around, and Hoft is just quoting him. Doesn’t note the error, however, and he should have.
uh-oh. i accidentally did a learn
um
ok so this Nunes is a founding member of the “Congressional Hispanic Conference”
he’s in the conference with guess who?
c’mon guess
yup it’s Pat Toomey!!
cause of Toomey’s mom’s grandparents were born in the Azores, which are an autonomous region of Portugal, where they don’t speak spanish like proper hispanics, but never you mind
how delicious to chance upon a hispanical senator out of the blue like that
And then there is: “HOLY CRAP accuracy.“
Saw that ‘tapped’ dealio last night. The original source, HotAir’s Green Room, changed their post title to reflect that there was no ‘tap’ involved (see the linky at Hoft’s joint; their post’s URL reflect the original post title).
Sloppy, Jim Hoft, sloppy. Perhaps you should take a cue from the greenies.
If’n you get bored or something, wander over to this Discus comment I left at the Charlotte Observer, give me a thumb’s up. Only if you think it’s worthy of one, of course.
Does this surprise anyone?
Well, should Joe Biden (shudder) be forced to take over as (shudder) President, let’s just hope he doesn’t break into his rendition of “I’m Your New Commander” at the swearing-in, what say?
Drudge is all about the tappy tappy cloackroom
this is how moron Rs overplay their hand
this Nunes seems a little overexcitable
*cloakroom* I mean
oh. Drudge’s link now has an update:
***
UPDATE: Jack Langer, Rep. Nunes’s communications director, emails this clarification:
I wanted to make a clarification for your article. What Rep. Nunes meant by “tapped” was that the DOJ seized the phone records, as has been widely reported. There was a little confusion between him and the host during the conversation: He did not mean to refer to phone records of the cloakroom itself, but of the Capitol. This refers to the phone records from the AP’s desk in the press gallery, which the DOJ admitted to looking at. He was explaining that if those phone records were seized, they would reveal a lot of conversations between the press and members of Congress, since reporters often speak to Members from the press gallery phones. The notion of the DOJ looking at phone records from the Capitol of conversations between Members of Congress and reporters is something that concerns Rep. Nunes, bringing up issues related to the separation of powers.
Although his comments were a bit unclear, he clarified soon after in the interview:
DN: So when they went after the AP reporters, right? Went after all of their phone records, they went after the phone records, including right up here in the House Gallery, right up from where I’m sitting right now. So you have a real separation of powers issue that did this really rise to the level that you would have to get phone records that would, that would most likely include members of Congress, because as you know…
Cloacaroom would work.
Cloak & Dagger Room
turtles can breathe through their cloaca by using it to suck in water and then harvesting oxygen from the water using ancient turtle magics