Is there nothing Obama supporters won’t say to excuse trampling on the First Amendment?

Apparently not.

The value to democracy of a courageous and unfettered press poking into back corners that agencies would rather keep hidden is incontrovertible. But I find myself wondering why journalists shouldn’t shoulder some responsibility for transgressions they often goad their sources to commit. […]

National security staffers’ careers can be wrecked over how they handle documents stamped SECRET.

Reporters, on the other hand, have little to lose when trawling for leaks. No American journalist has been prosecuted for publishing classified information. […]

But the stakes might be clearer if sources knew that reporters had skin in the game, too: if they understood that journalists weren’t asking questions idly — in hopes of a passing scoop, or even happy to be made use of in some messaging campaign — but because the information is so critical to the public interest that they are willing to risk repercussions for finding and airing it.

Yet, author Sarah Chayes spends the last part of her piece mildly complaining about how the Obama administration over-classifies information that is of no critical importance yet offers no suggestion on holding the people who make such classification accountable.

Like David Plouffe brushing off the IRS targeting of TEA Partiers and other dissenters of the Obama Administration, the talking points on how these abridgments of Constitutional rights are to be promoted are clear: Treat them as minor infractions that harbored no ill-intent and admonish people to Move On.

“Comrades!’ he cried. ‘You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.”

animal farm obama