The Associated Press on Monday revealed that the Department of Justice had secretly spied on AP reporters, obtaining two months’ worth of telephone records in what was most likely an attempt to crack down on internal leaks.

According to the AP, the Justice Department acquired records for more than 20 different phone lines associated with the news agency — including reporters’ cell, office, and home lines — that could affect more than 100 staffers. Calling the move a “massive and unprecedented intrusion,” AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt demanded that the DOJ explain why it had gone after the records. He also insisted that the government return the phone records and destroy all other copies of them.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of the Associated Press and its reporters,” he said in a strongly worded letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. “These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news-gathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP‘s news-gathering operations, and disclose information about AP‘s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

He also accused the government of violating the news agency’s First Amendment rights, saying, “We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.”

The DOJ told the AP of the secret eavesdropping on Friday, though the department did not explain exactly why it had gone after the records, dated April and May of 2012. According to the AP, the records detail incoming and outgoing calls on reporters’ personal phones, as well as office lines in New York, Hartford, Conn., and Washington, D.C. — including the agency’s line at the House of Representatives.

The AP suggested the snooping may have been an attempt to find out who within the government leaked information about a foiled Yemeni terror plot that ran in a May 2012 AP story.

More from the Associated Press on that:

The government would not say why it sought the records. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

In testimony in February, CIA Director John Brennan noted that the FBI had questioned him about whether he was AP‘s source, which he denied. He called the release of the information to the media about the terror plot an “unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information.” [Associated Press]

As the AP notes, prosecutors had previously asked the agency and its reporters for that information, though the news agency declined to cooperate. According to the AP, phone records for five reporters and one editor who worked on that story were among those collected by the DOJ.

In an interview with The Washington Post, a lawyer for the AP warned that the intrusion would have a chilling effect on the agency’s ability to effectively gather and report the news.

“This action is a dagger to the heart of AP‘s news-gathering activity,” lawyer David Schulz said. “Sources are not likely to talk to reporters who they know are being used as investigative tools by prosecutors. And that’s what’s happening here.”

Likewise, the American Civil Liberties Union strongly condemned the seizure as an “unacceptable abuse of power.”

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The Liberty Report Take:  This is exactly the kind of abuse that happens when we send politicians to Washington who won’t uphold the Constitution.  This is a consequence of Big Government ideology versus a limited federal government that adheres to the most sublime Constitution ever written by mankind.  Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Click below for the full article on The Week’s website.

http://theweek.com/article/index/244114/why-did-the-obama-administration-spy-on-the-associated-press

In just one week, President Barack Obama’s political machine has switched from endless campaign to survival mode. And for the first time in Obama’s presidency, the damage to his regime may be permanent.

Three revelations have come together like an avalanche. First, there was a Benghazi hearing that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that this administration is feckless, dishonest, and cravenly politicized. But in its aftermath on Friday, an executive branch information dump dropped another bombshell: the IRS does indeed target and intimidate conservative groups.

This appalling admission from a senior IRS official was obviously meant to slide into the news cycle and dissipate over the weekend. This unseemly public relations gambit has become a hallmark of the Obama approach to all issues, regardless of their importance to the nation. Deny or delay, spin and win.

And, to the discredit of our electorate, it has worked–until perhaps now.

As the country was still reeling from the gut-wrenching testimony of three Benghazi whistleblowers and the IRS mea culpa, yet another log was thrown onto the bonfire of the Obama administration’s credibility. Yesterday the Associated Press broke a news story that Obama’s Justice Department collected phone data on dozens of AP reporters as part of a national security leak investigation.

Such sweeping intrusion upon a news organization’s privacy–exposing all its sources and chilling all speech in the process–makes a mockery of the Constitution’s guarantee of not “abridging the freedom of speech.” We can now add the First Amendment to the butcher’s bill of Obama administration overreach and nascent autocracy.

These three scandals have encircled the Obama administration. They threaten to turn the President’s second term into an ongoing partisan dogfight as the GOP pushes for answers that could trigger investigations, resignations–yes, possibly even impeachment, depending on what is found.

Here’s a brief rundown of the current debacles facing Obama:

1) IRS as a Political Weapon

The IRS singled out and harassed conservative political groups, including during the election year of 2012. The mere mention of the IRS understandably sends a jolt of anxiety through most Americans, so the implications of this conduct for Tea Party and other conservative groups are obvious. This was the worst kind of dirty politics, and an affront to even the most basic trust in government.

While the IRS admitted this egregious conduct, already there have been lies peddled about the depth and scope of this malfeasance. At first we were told that the breaches were limited to low-level civil servants in a few field offices. But that was also false, as we now know Washington DC-based IRS officials were involved too.

The familiar script from Obama and his phalanx of public relations protectors in the White House–that the IRS abuses are not political, and only those who want answers have any political motivations–sounds increasingly obtuse, and pathetic. All the obfuscation on these issues come from the same direction, and benefit the same side of the political aisle.

And ultimately, incompetence and ignorance are poor excuses for a chief executive. The president can only claim he didn’t know what his agencies were up to so many times before someone asks the President that all important question- what would you say, you do here?

2) Frontal Assault on the First Amendment

If a free press is the foundation upon which representative government is built, the Obama administration has allowed the Department of Justice to take a sledgehammer to it. The wholesale investigation of a major news outlet like the Associated Press undermines the intent and spirit of laws meant to promote the discourse necessary for democracy.

And this sets a very dangerous precedent. Unknown to much of the public, there is no special exception for the media to publish classified government information, nor are there hard-and-fast statutory constraints on calling members of the press to divulge their sources under pressure of subpoena. If Obama’s DOJ can do this once, there is no reason they can’t make it standard operating procedure. That would mean bye-bye, fourth estate.

Until now, the federal government has been generally aware of the tension that exists between national security and the First Amendment. Not this administration. Leakers, at least the ones not authorized from the White House itself, are punished severely.

At this early stage, it seems likely the Obama administration recognized that, despite its loud proclamations of outrage, no arrests have been made over the string of national security leaks over the past two years. In order to make it look like they take all leaks seriously, and to send a message to any prospective whistleblowers, Obama officials probably decided to go all in after one unauthorized leaker without the benefit of White House connections. That frenzied effort may have led to the unprecedented, secret seizure of Associated Press records.

3) Benghazi Lies Laid Bare

While the audacity of hyper-partisanship from Obama is jarring, it’s not shocking. So much about this administration, and for so long, has been venal, petty, and undignified. The most recent iteration of the Benghazi hearings solidified those feelings and left even the most ardent administration supporter defending the indefensible. But many questions remain:

Who made up the story about the YouTube video? Was Hillary Clinton incapable of calling her own employees to find out what happened? Where was President Obama during the 8-hour attack? What is being done to bring the attackers to justice? These are just some of the unknowns that require continued investigation despite the administration’s efforts at stonewalling.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/obama-administration-under-siege-from-3-huge-scandals-heres-why-it-could-all-come-crashing-down/

Exactly ten days ago, President Barack Obama was piously telling reporters who cover him that free speech and an independent press are “essential pillars of our democracy.” On Monday, the Associated Press accused his administration of undermining that very pillar by secretly obtaining two months’ worth of telephone records of AP reporters and editors.

“We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news,” AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The latest revelations are sure to pour fuel on the fire of Republican-driven Richard Nixon comparisons. They come in the wake of revelations that the IRS may have improperly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of conservative, tea party-linked groups. This might, in order words, not be a great time to announce a groundbreaking trip to China.

And the news threatens to pile fresh political woes on a second term already burdened by a painful gun-control defeat, a seemingly stalled economic agenda, and Republican rage at the botched response to the Sept. 12, 2012 terrorist attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

The revelations that the Justice Department may have sought AP phone records drew an angry response from Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s office. “The First Amendment is first for a reason. If the Obama Administration is going after reporters’ phone records, they better have a damned good explanation,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.

And Laura Murphy, a top American Civil Liberties Union official in Washington, D.C., condemned “unwarranted surveillance” of the press and urged Holder to explain what transpired “so that we can make sure this kind of press intimidation does not happen again.”

Holder was expected to face questions on the issue when he appears Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia did not answer a question from Yahoo News on whether other news outlets had been targeted. The spokesman, Bill Miller, did not confirm the AP allegations, but insisted in a statement that “we take seriously our obligations to follow all applicable laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations.”

Pruitt, in his letter to Holder, fiercely disagreed.

He said that the Justice Department had obtained telephone records for more than 20 separate phone lines assigned to the AP — the world’s largest wire service — and its journalists. The records cover a two-month span in early 2012 and cover phones lines for AP in New York City, Washington D.C., Hartford, Conn., and one line at the AP workspace in the House of Representatives.

“This action was taken without advance notice to AP or to any of the affected journalists, and even after the fact no notice has been sent to individual journalists whose home phones and cell phone records were seized by the Department,” Pruitt wrote.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters,” Pruitt wrote. “These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

Pruitt called it “particularly troubling” that the Justice Department “undertook this unprecedented step without providing any notice to the AP, and without taking any steps to narrow the scope of its subpoenas to matters actually relevant to an ongoing investigation.”

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The Liberty Report Take: As posted earlier today, this is yet another move to transition the United States away from the consitution into a Big Brother form of government.

Click below for the full article.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/benghazi-irs-tea-party-probe-govt-seized-ap-221531096.html