'Obama Is Fast Becoming the Worst National Security Press President Ever'

"President Barack H. Obama’s outrageous seizure of the Associated Press’s phone records, allegedly to discover sources of leaks, should surprise no one...He is fast becoming the worst national security press president ever, and it may not get any better."

So wrote James Goodale Tuesday, the attorney who defended the New York Times against President Richard Nixon in the famous Pentagon Papers trial.

Goodale continued:

It is believed that Obama’s Justice Department sought AP’s records to find the source of a leak that informed an AP story about a failed terrorist attack. What makes this action particularly egregious is that Justice didn’t tell AP what it was doing until two months after it obtained the records. This not only violates Justice Department guidelines for subpoenas of this sort, but also common sense, decency, and the First Amendment.

Under the guidelines, subpoenas concerning the press cannot be issued without the express approval of the Attorney General. Further, before a subpoena is issued, the government is honor bound to negotiate with the party to which it is directed.

Adding to this, Goodale told the New York Observer Tuesday:

“Nixon and Agnew were like listening to a Fox News program all day long, every day,” he said. “In their eyes, the Eastern establishment press were against them and they were against it and they were going to destroy it as best they can.” But, he said, “Obama has all these things that he’s done to the press on national security matters that Nixon never did.”

As more information concerning the AP and the IRS scandals comes to light, it will be interesting to see how many of Obama's fans in the media will voice similar conclusions.

Stay tuned.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/05/15/pentagon-papers-attorney-obama-fast-becoming-worst-national-security#ixzz2TO6ZHlUb

That's an opinion piece with no basis of fact. (not surprised) Holder is in front of the Congress this afternoon. He was recused from the AP case so he didn't run it, and there are exceptions to making pre-notifications to the subject of the subpoena, for obvious security reasons.

It would be nice to have all the facts before we come to conclusions, but then again the Republicans are scratching and clawing for a cause, any cause at all! They're going to take a break from the witch hunts this week to try and repeal Obamacare for the 37th time. If you don't succeed the first 36 times, try, try again!

White House aides on Tuesday tried to distance President Obama from the growing controversies over the IRS' targeting of conservative groups and the Justice Department's monitoring of journalists' phones by pleading total ignorance of events already starting to overshadow virtually every other issue on the president's agenda.

But even Democrats fear that the Obama administration's strategy of laying low and keeping quiet may only intensify scrutiny of the president and make it harder for him to escape blame for the actions of those working below him.

"They're just dragging this out," said one veteran Democratic strategist, pointing to clean-up efforts during President Clinton's second term. "Dodge, delay and shifting blame doesn't work in situations like these. They need to get out in front of this. Instead, they're failing crisis management 101."

http://washingtonexaminer.com/wh-tries-to-insulate-obama-from-growing-controversies/article/2529705

Nothing new there. The appropriate thing to to is conduct the investigation, find out what happened, and then assign responsibility and make your corrections, with discipline if necessary. All of this is just right wing fueled hysteria. They got nothing else!