Why DOJ Didn't Need a "Super Search Warrant" To Snoop On Fox News' E-mail 330
awaissoft writes "If attorney general Eric Holder wanted to perform even a momentary Internet wiretap on Fox News' e-mail accounts, he would have had to persuade a judge to approve what lawyers call a 'super search warrant.' A super search warrant's requirements are exacting: Intercepted communications must be secured and placed under seal. Real-time interception must be done only as a last resort. Only certain crimes qualify for this technique, the target must be notified, and additional restrictions apply to state and local police conducting real-time intercepts. But because of the way federal law was written nearly half a century ago, Holder was able to obtain a normal search warrant — lacking those extensive privacy protections — that allowed federal agents to secretly obtain up to six years of email correspondence between Fox News correspondent James Rosen and his alleged sources."
Not OK No Matter What. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The DOJ loves that this has become a Red/Blue slug fest. It diverts the public's attention from the real issue.
Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the DOJ is throwing fuel on that fire. If the Reds and Blues hung up their gloves for a minute, and really thought about it . . . they would both direct their guns at the DOJ instead of each other.
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Wow. Great way to be above the partisan ship. You can't even restrain yourself from the "Faux" talking point.
Blame game (Score:5, Insightful)
who started privacy abuses,
what party is/was in power.
There is something going terribly wrong here.
We, as Americans,
have obviously slid quite a little way down the slippery slope,
toward something quite different than the bastion of freedom we like to think of ourselves as...
We should be doing something more about it than pointing fingers and playing politics.
Re:Blame game (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly.
Everyone is so worried about whose ox was gored and whose ox did the goring that they are totally willing
to overlook that we are all bleeding. And its not JUST this issue or JUST wiretaps.
The constitution is in tatters, our freedoms are an illusion, and everybody thinks that as long as
they can drive to a ball game and have a beer everything is just fine.
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And one side is working to get rid of the driving. The other side would be working on getting rid of the beer if they didn't need redneck support.
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You two make sense (along with a few others), but it's easier for most to play 'he said, she said', while floating along in the shitstream that's left of our heritage on the way to the holding tank.
Reminder (Score:5, Informative)
An infringement on the freedom of the press, or the confidentiality of sources, is a threat to democracy regardless of whether it targets an actual news agency or a mockery thereof.
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Did NBC get their e-mails snagged too?
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While I think anything run by Murdoch is a corrupt mockery it appears to me that this reporter was engaged in real investigative journalism.
As such his treatment is a serious scandal.
Just pass a fucking new law (Score:5, Interesting)
Congress should pass an adjusted law and move on rather than making it a witch hunt. Trying to milk it as a "dirty conspiracy" will just pull BOTH parties (deeper) into the mud.
Computerized gerrymandering is part of the problem: politicians redraw their own districts to be slanted politically so that all they have to do is kiss up to extremists to get re-elected rather than do real work.
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Computerized gerrymandering is part of the problem: politicians redraw their own districts to be slanted politically so that all they have to do is kiss up to extremists to get re-elected rather than do real work.
They don't have to kiss up to extremists, or do anything. With a well enough gerrymandered district the Democrats or Republicans could run a dead slug and he'd get elected. The 2012 redistricting did this where I live. Instead of adjusting the congressional districts, they completely redrew them. At least it was bipartisan - we now have a guaranteed Democratic district and a guaranteed Republican district.
Re:What did Fox News do? (Score:5, Informative)
Investigative journalism apparently. You know, the stuff that the major networks gave up on years ago.
Re:What did Fox News do? (Score:4, Insightful)
They investigate what they choose to investigate for their own ends. No network has given that up. Fox News just tends to be investigating a lot more now, with a left leaning president, while during W they mostly just pandered. Now MSNBC is in pander mode, having done the "investigating" thing during W.
Pretending anything else is just exposing your personal bias. The crime here is our news outlets have such blatant bias, and very little dedication to journalism and conveying the facts to the masses. Worst, people actually think that what these organizations are doing is truth.
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They investigate what they choose to investigate for their own ends. No network has given that up. Fox News just tends to be investigating a lot more now, with a left leaning president, while during W they mostly just pandered. Now MSNBC is in pander mode, having done the "investigating" thing during W.
So between the two of them at least somebody is doing some investigation regardless of who is president. Ideally news outfits would be less biased and more willing to hang any president, but the way this works now is pretty much how the press has worked for most of our history. It's a lot better than having no one investigating.
BTW, when did Obama become a "left leaning president" as you put it? He's a Democrat, which means CNN loves him and Fox hates him, but on most issues he doesn't lean left at all. Y
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FTFY. Obama is solidly liberal on health care, immigration, environment, gay rights (well, now at least), abortion, race, political speech (e.g. Citizen's United decision), spending, taxes, macroeconomics (stimulus, son of stimulus, QE 2 and 3, etc.), scope of government, gun rights, and most foreign affairs (his views on Israel and UN, and his entire "foreign policy reset" was based on liberal conventional wisdom).
Obama is solidly leftish-authoritarian on these issues. Or perhaps you could say Liberal. But he is almost exactly the opposite of liberal on these issues.
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That has always been the case, the various news outlets' claims to the contrary notwithstanding. It doesn't bother me as much as the obvious willingness of people to abandon the First Amendment protections for a news source they don't agree with.
You'd think Slashdotters would be intelligent enough to separate the principle from the actors. Oh, wait. This is Slashdot.
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That has always been the case, the various news outlets' claims to the contrary notwithstanding. It doesn't bother me as much as the obvious willingness of people to abandon the First Amendment protections for a news source they don't agree with.
You'd think Slashdotters would be intelligent enough to separate the principle from the actors. Oh, wait. This is Slashdot. My bad.
That has not always been the case. Early on, network news was a public service and paid for by the profits from other programming. Then some bright MBA got the idea that if they made it controversial and sensational then more people would tune in and they could charge more for commercials, just like regular programming. Thus was born the modern news outlet and journalism, where it is no longer about presenting the news, but attracting viewers for advertising revenue. Sex sells, so we had weeks of the Jod
Re:What did Fox News do? (Score:5, Informative)
Can you point to us where the other networks were investigating things...unless fox was investigating it first? You know, sometimes a month or more beforehand. Besides, it wasn't just MSNBC in pander mode, but NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. So, really now we've got a 5:1 ratio. Then again, Fox was hardly silent during the days of W, and broke several stories that the other part of news media then caught onto. And really the media hasn't only done this with the current administration, but other important news stories...like the Gosnell trial. And the only reason why they refused to do any news on that is because they were carrying even more water.
Even though I'm up in Canada, Fox was the only one that carried pundits on both sides of the issue on that one. The other 5 did nothing on it, for nearly a month. In fact the reserved press section in the courtroom was uniformly empty of them, AP, Reuters, AFP among others and only Fox and bloggers were the ones covering it.
Re:What did Fox News do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Very good point, no news source has ever been in existence that didn't have an ulterior motive. Weather it was for profit, pander or ideals. The news has always been spoon fed to us.
Well, the bias has manifested itself in different ways and severity. I'm sure that there have been some egregious cases of bias in the past. In past decades though, many news stations took their job seriously and strove for objective news, with biases creeping in mostly as a result of subconscious slips when putting together stories.
Today, because echo chamber news has shown to be more profitable than real news, the bias is mostly mandated by company policy. Fox started first by pandering to the right, MSNBC came next by pandering to the left, and CNN... well, I think CNN just has a gas leak somewhere in their office.
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"The news has always been spoon fed to us."
Never heard of Edward Murrow, I guess. There have always been some papers that played along, and always some papers that never did; most of the good ones - and damn few are left - did what they always did, dug into stuff, looking for dirt to write about to gain subscribers and advertisers. Along the way some very good reporting got done.
It takes some effort today to find those papers, those which can afford to pay reporters to do their jobs, rather than re-phrasi
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No, MSNBC and all the other networks but Fox are in pander mode. Once you get past idiot partisan biases, you realize a simple fact:
If you vote in a Democrat, one shitty network, Fox, and a handful of conservative rags will investigate the administration.
If you vote for a Republican, all the good networks (and the ridiculously shitty MSNBC) and the vast majority of the press will investigate the administration.
Vote Republican just so the fourth estate will do their fucking job.
That might actually convince some of my friends. If they actually believed that the big news players were playing softball. They think they're playing hardball, and that Fox is making up fake documents Dan Rather style.
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I know they are stupid and shouldn't be called a news show, but what did they do that requires wiretapping?
Perhaps the more relevant question should be what does anyone do to justify wiretapping, which in this police state, amounts to jack shit.
(I didn't use the word "warrant" here, because that might imply they need to follow the law and obtain one. They don't.)
But hey, keep arguing red vs. blue and vote for that two-party system. You see how much fucking good it does...
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I know they are stupid and shouldn't be called a news show, but what did they do that requires wiretapping?
It's not what they did; it's what the person talking to them was allegedly doing. The Executive branch was investigating a leak from one of its own, and Fox News was on the receiving end of the information, apparently, so by wiretapping Fox News' communications, they were hoping to find the source of the leak.
Re:What did Fox News do? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not what they did; it's what the person talking to them was allegedly doing. The Executive branch was investigating a leak from one of its own, and Fox News was on the receiving end of the information, apparently, so by wiretapping Fox News' communications, they were hoping to find the source of the leak.
This is exactly the kind of activity that is supposed to be prohibited by the 1st amendment; attempting to force the press (covertly or not) to reveal the identity of their sources.
Re: What did Fox News do? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes but Governments these days asks themselves the important question of "What Would Nixon Do?"
Quick, get someone over to the Watergate!
Re: What did Fox News do? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes but Gouvernments these days asks themselves the important question of "What Would Nixon Do?".
- yeah, and then they multiply it by about 1000 and do that instead.
Has Nixon actually bombed a bunch of Americans around the world? I hate the guy, by the way, but I don't think he has done anything even close to what the modern day politicians are doing daily.
Everything Nixon did is legal in current day USA.
Think about that.
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Re:What did Fox News do? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know they are stupid and shouldn't be called a news show, but what did they do that requires wiretapping?
Journalism.
No, seriously: James Rosen asked someone at the State Department questions about North Korea.
Because that apparently could involve classified information (not that it necessarily did), Obama's Department of Justice pulled six years of Rosen's email.
Re:What did Fox News do? (Score:5, Informative)
I know they are stupid and shouldn't be called a news show, but what did they do that requires wiretapping?
Rosen reported that,
"U.S. intelligence officials have warned President Obama and other senior American officials that North Korea intends to respond to the passage of a U.N. Security Council resolution this week... with another nuclear test,"
And now the "Justice" Department is telling us that they consider him an accomplice to espionage.
Re:What did Fox News do? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not News to Fox (Score:5, Informative)
Did you even bother to read the story at the link you provided?
The story there tells us that FoxNews knew of a telephone records search, but not of an email search.
"CNN and other media outlets have previously reported a separate Justice Department query into Rosen's e-mails. With the approval of Attorney General Eric Holder, Justice officials obtained a warrant from a federal judge to access Rosen's e-mails.
While Fox News is now acknowledging that the Justice Department notified its parent company about the phone records search, that notice apparently did not include anything about the separate search of Rosen's e-mail."
Re:Not News to Fox (Score:5, Interesting)
Under the law they used for the warrant, they didn't have to notify until 90 days after the termination of the intercept.
But since the intercept was continuous, and for all we know, still on-going, they never notified about Rosen's mail.
The whole article is a mess of obfuscation until you read to the bottom of the the story where it FINALLY gets to the point:
The gradual supplanting of the POP protocol, where messages typically were not left on mail servers and available for law enforcement, by the newer server-based IMAP protocol also encouraged this shift.
Any mail you keep on a service for more than 6 months is considered abandoned, and fair game. This means ANY IMAP account outside of your premises is wide open to seizure.
Which means every google/microsoft/yahoo mail account is fair game under the obsolete 68 law unless you take careful pains to only and always use POP, and never leave a copy on the server.
The law is clearly being deliberately misused, and the mail is not abandoned, as long as the account is being used.
Re:Not News to Fox (Score:5, Insightful)
The simple solution is to fold email into current law so as to enjoy the same protections as snail mail.
Re:Not News to Fox (Score:5, Funny)
But that would be a Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense, and those have been illegal for neigh on 30 years now.
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unless you take careful pains to only and always use POP,
It's NOT a solution. The only working solution (vulnerable to sniffer only) is your own encrypted SMTP server on encrypted partition, with your last will to physically destroy the boot flash. The more radical means (I2P or possibly TOR) are incompatible with existing mail.
The simple solution is to fold email into current law so as to enjoy the same protections as snail mail.
Can you personally fold your email into current law?
Re: Not News to Fox (Score:5, Insightful)
An administration spying on journalists and using the IRS as a political tool is chilling as fuck and every single American ought to be scared as shit of it. Oh wait, you voted for him? Makes it ok I guess!
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Not shocking this is flagged informative by the left leaning slashdot. Gotta circle the troops around the commander and chief. God forbid he is worse than GWB
Uh, you did read the summary at least, right? This is extremely critical of Obama and Holder.
Re: Not News to Fox (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny...
When it's a shitbag PFC posting to wikileaks, it's all Save The Whistle-blower around here.
Re: Not News to Fox (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially as the PFC actually raised his right hand and swore to be a good and obedient soldier. His was an act of treason whereas reporters are generally depended upon to be all about the story they are after. This is Fox News though. A lot of the left hates them enough to not mind if the administration they worship pisses all over the First Amendment. I noticed most of the leftist media though wasn't so happy about it however. They, unlike the liberals here, are smart enough to realize that one day there might be another Republican administration (I doubt it but I guess it could happen) and they don't like the precedent this sets. To me this is just another sign that using e-mail is not a good idea. If I was in the news business I'd start raising pigeons.
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Here is the official oath, directly from the Army's website. [army.mil]
I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960
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If PFC Manning thought he blowing the whistle, he should have used the appropriate channels to do so. Leaking classified documents to the press was not the proper way to go about it. There are several legal outlets available for doing just that. They all lie outside the chain of command such that retaliation by the chain of command is neigh on impossible. Hell, he could have even gone to the FBI if he thought he couldn't trust the military. They do a pretty decent job of bringing down high ranking officials when they have actual evidence to go with. But no, PFC Manning was just an idiot that couldn't follow the rules, and put people's lives in danger. He deserves the full penalty of law.
Main part of the leak was that the official channels ALREADY KNEW and APPROVED.
Including cia, fbi and the president.
duh.
Re: Not News to Fox (Score:3)
Wow. So that the ticket. All the Imperial President needs is the appropriate doublespeak labels for his enemies in the press and they can be destroyed. No first amendment issues here, the Emperor says so.
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In his situation you have to risk the time, is it worth it? Will public groundswell save you if you are found out? Neither Wikileaks, nor any intermediary can be held responsible under the First Amendment unless they bribed or coerced him somehow.
But reporters, they're just receiving this info. It should be protected under this super search warrant.
I hope these past few weeks have been instructive in the wisdom of forbidding government certain powers on principle. It will be misused. Don't fall into the
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Of course my stance is that almost nothing should be classified, so that things like this couldn't happen, but that won't happen. If you are going to
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Dictionary.com doesn't trump the Constitution.
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Nonsense. Rosen reported that the DPK was going to detonate another nuke. That isn't sensitive material. Rosen didn't go into the means and methods in his reporting. Just that a detonation was coming up. BFD..
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So suppose I'm in the NPK counter intelligence agency and see this report.
It wouldn't take a giant step to come to the conclusion that there is a plant in out organization.
Just the report is enough.
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IRS is one thing
but the news thing, they reported what was classified info which is illegal. no reason for the government not to try to find out who gave it to them
Unless you believe in a free press which means their sources are protected. Otherwise, if the sources fear they will be found out by the government, they won't come forward.
Re: Not News to Fox (Score:5, Informative)
You have no idea what you are talking about.
It is NOT illegal to receive classified information and publish it if it is just dumped in your lap, like the Pentagon Papers.
It is if you asked for it and conspired obtain the information, which is what they are trying to proveby naming him an coconspiritor.
Add to that the fact tht Holder testified he knew nothing about it and did not condone it.... And yet it turns out he signed the warrant.
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So you are all for putting most of the NYTs staff in jail for their role in releasing classified information over the past several decades?
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Re:Not News to Fox (Score:4, Informative)
If you are an honest individual, the easiest way to show you that you are wrong is to have you look at youtube for the times where they have taken news from elsewhere and spliced it together to try to make something which never existed... for example, fox took a segment from the daily show during the 2008 election and did just that.
I am being polite here, the alternative to the above would just be a troll fest.
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I'd love a link to that.
You're the one who needs to wakeup (Score:2, Insightful)
First, Team Obama have had an effort underway since the start of their campaign in late 2007 to push the theme that Fox news is evil/bad/untrustworthy because it is the ONLY network in the US with no financial ties, employment ties, or family ties (by blood or marriage) to the Obama campaign and PR people (look it up... it's shocking how many at the other news outlets have either worked for the Obama admin, fund raised for them, or are married or biologically related to them). No other president in U.S. His
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For example, the only thing on CNN this week was the Jodi Arias trial which to me isn't newsworthy but they did this to hide the fact the administration (e.g. IRS, DOJ, and President) are all involved in various scandals. Fox reported this and barely mentioned the trial, which is how it should be.
I guess you didn't watch CNN at all last week, when all of the scandals first broke, and there was nonstop coverage of it (including about a solid hour of live testimony in front of Congress from Miller) and nearly no coverage of Jodi Arias. Funny how small sample sizes work, eh?
Re:Not News to Fox (Score:4, Funny)
Does that "current events" selection include all of Obama's scandals and coverups? Or is it limited to who won American Idol and how big Kim Kararshian's ass is?
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Easily... (Score:4, Informative)
The studies you cite, done by a democrat professor from a less-than-stellar university over-sampled Fox news viewers and then asked them a bunch of "current events" questions which ALL Americans generally do poorly at.
Want the TRUTH? try this page [politifact.com] which is not a Fox-related site.
Try getting some news from a place not tied to the Democrats or to Progressives (i.e. stop soaking your head in the MSNBC/HuffPo/Kos KoolAid). Some lefty academics have done studies specifically designed to trash non-lefties and then pushed them through the progressive-run media (all of whom hyped those studies and in a circular fashion passed them around) and because most of their target audience never seems to come up to the surface for air, this scheme works fairly well.... it just does not convince anybody whose not already in the tank.
Progressivism is toxic and Dangerous and always leads to bad things... Progressives count on the public being dumb enough to confuse "Progressivism" with "progress"... the two are only related if you are a hard-core evolutionist who wants to give mother nature a bit of a hand... [youtube.com] The last time Progressivism rose in America (Early 1900's) it lead to extreme evil and it spread some nasty ideas (like genetic purity/superiority/cleanliness, supermen, euthenasia, the individual as only a cog in the great machine of society, assigning a dollar value to a human being, etc) around the world... so much so that the left abandoned the "progressive" title they'd previously been proud of and they hid behind the moniker: "liberal". Now, having soiled the term "liberal" they are hoping that everybody forgot about the bad side of progressivism and, like cattle, they are all following Hillary Clinton's call to go back to that term. There's a very good reason why nearly all the Progressive webites and think tanks have been partly funded by the world's richest and most famous NAZI collaborator.... young people need to WAKE UP and study some of that history stuff your progressive/unionized teachers did not teach you... you are being setup for a VERY DARK future just as a previous generation of young people were similarly setup.... only now the world has far better technology to oppress and kill...
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Fox News only cares because it's happening to them.
At least they care about it for some reason. They may be hypocrites and only care about their own, but things like this make the press more sensitive to such issues and people in general more aware.
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First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
Re:There you have it (Score:4, Insightful)
Your problem might be that you have mistaken Democrats for actual leftists.
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Leave the facts out of this. You'll destroy the fantasy with facts.
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You'd like to think so.
Who's banking system blew up the worldwide economy? Who's demand for cheap goods is driving climate change? It's not the "leftist" countries, who are enjoying better health care for less money while not forcing their young to gamble their future on 5 figure student loans.
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Nothing is more amusing to me that watching leftists trying to pretend this is all okay
Please cite some specific examples "leftists" trying to pretend this is ok.
Re:There you have it (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL, no, if you voted for Romney the government would have engaged in unconstitutional wiretapping anyway. Everyone wants to expand government powers when they're in charge then rein them back when they aren't.
My problem with Fox News and their supporters is their embarrassing inconsistencies on this issue. Roger Ailes said in 1988 that leakers should be tortured and executed, and Fox News personalities have consistently declared war against Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Wikileaks because they weren't real news organizations. It's the leftists who defended Bradley Manning and also Fox News. Just read everyone who supports Fox News. [foxnews.com] Even the New York Times got Fox News' back: "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." So not only are you wrong about the right, you're also wrong about the left. I guess you must be a GOP.
And about the IRS scandal. Remember when four Republican congressmen asked (and received) a three year IRS probe into the NAACP for saying bad things about President Bush? LOL.
Seriously, the GOP and its supporters should adopt a worldview that's at least internally consistent. The leftists do a better job of it than the right. The GOP argues that we should preserve the Constitution then argues that we should strip American citizens of their Constitutional rights because they were accused of being a bomber. PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK!
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They told me if I voted for Romney the government would engage in unconstitutional wiretapping.
Nothing is more amusing to me that watching leftists trying to pretend this is all okay because it's Fox and not what they consider real news organizations. I hope you remember this moment when the next Republican president takes office.
Nothing more amusing than watching conservatives complaining about "leftists trying to pretend this is all okay" when virtually none are.
Sure those people exist, but in my experience that level of hypocrisy is a confined to a marginalized fringe on the left.
Hell, just out of curiosity I checked out what Daily Kos [dailykos.com] had to say. It's mostly schadenfreude and laughing at the hypocrisy but no where do I see them pretending it's ok.
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They don't have to. I did not read about this on Fox news, and I doubt you did either. Other news agencies have taken the story and run with it.
Re:There you have it (Score:5, Insightful)
Fast & Furious is a major scandal. It's perfectly reasonable for Fox to treat it as such.
Re:There you have it (Score:4, Informative)
It's just hundreds of innocent Mexicans murdered by guns the administration supplied to drug cartels. How is that a scandal?
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney made his dog ride on top of the family car once. Sorry widows and orphans of murdered Mexicans, you lose.
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It's just hundreds of innocent Mexicans murdered by guns the administration supplied to drug cartels. How is that a scandal?
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney made his dog ride on top of the family car once. Sorry widows and orphans of murdered Mexicans, you lose.
It wasn't the administration, it was the Phoenix branch of the ATF.
And they didn't supply the guys to the cartels, they allowed individual smugglers to cross the border with the hopes they could shut down the entire network.
Look at it for what it was, a very high risk Arizona ATF operation that failed badly, and left the Mexicans carrying the bag. Similar operations also occurred under Bush with the difference that they were smaller and the Mexicans were involved. But the Bush or Obama administrations didn'
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But the actions of a Phoenix ATF director over multiple administrations doesn't have a damn thing to do with Obama.
He just heard about it on the news, I guess -- like a lot of other things his administration has done lately.
Why stonewall the congressional investigation then? Why withhold documents? Why should people believe the Administration's story when they're hiding evidence from congressional investigators?
Does the Obama administration withhold documents they shouldn't? Yes, so do all other administrations whenever a scandal pops up, but the Obama administration is just as bad if not worse in a lot of cases and deserves a ton of blame and criticism for not being more transparent.
But you didn't say they were withholding info or obstructing the investigation, you said "hundreds of innocent Mexicans murdered by guns the administration supplied to drug cartels", a claim that is false.
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> Fast & Furious is a major scandal. It's perfectly reasonable for Fox to treat it as such.
It is absolutely a major scandal. But Fox trivializes the scandal by politicizing it. Instead of making it about government run amok, they keep trying to make it about the "other team" running amok. That is a major disservice because it makes people like the OP tune out. They are the little network that cried Fox.
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Fast & Furious is a major scandal. It's perfectly reasonable for Fox to treat it as such.
Not if you believe that private, individual gun ownership should be highly restricted/regulated and/or outright prohibited at almost any cost, and that the ends justify the means, so that running guns to Mexican drug cartels resulting in innocent Mexican civilian and US law enforcement deaths, all as a propaganda scheme to attack the 2nd Amendment, is OK as long as nobody finds out.
Sort of like the Benghazi, AP, and IRS scandals. Those in power view the whistle-blowers as the problem, not their own illegal
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It can't be a major scandal. CBS, ABC and NBC are pretty much treating it as minor news.
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Howcum it wasn't a major scandal when Bush was doing the same thing?
Could it be the House and was Republican for 6 out of his 8 years in office?
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Howcum it wasn't a major scandal when Bush was doing the same thing?
The Bush administration actually followed the guns and made arrests instead of letting them disappear like Obama's people did.
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It wasn't Holder, it was the Phoenix ATF.
If the guy who's been delivering your mail for 20 years drops one of your letters in the mud is it Obama's fault via the Postmaster General?
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Re:There you have it (Score:4, Funny)
Nobody gave the cartels anything. They sold them to the cartels. We're running out of money and we've got to get some revenue somehow.
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Please tell me what you would consider a scandal.
Mitt Romney said 47% of people don't pay income taxes and so his tax cut message might not appeal to them. Scandal-palooza!
(Sorry dead Mexicans and grieving widows and orphans and parents of murdered children. You lose.)
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President Obama is a firm supporter of civil liberties. At least for people that agree with him.
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I'm not going through the whole silly list. Let me just take the first line. The drone strikes are being criticized all over the place. In fact, one of the few places that isn't critical of them is Fox News. I'm pretty sure they feel it's one of the few things the Obama administration is doing right.
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I know you're an idiot but try to think anyway. Anti-war protestors are still around and by definition they are anti drone strikes. Just because the protesters aren't front page news like they were during the Bush administration they still exist whether or not they make the lead story on the news or not. As far as putting on a show for "rubes" like me I think not. I'm not terribly impressed by people carrying signs and yelling for the cameras. Don't think the left isn't upset by the drone strikes just
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It's not wrong because someone is doing it. It's wrong because they are doing it.
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And no, the press isn't staying out of it. I hear about all sorts of things in the mainstream press. So not only is your conclusion wrong, but your premise as well.