Don’t Blame Obama For The IRS And AP Scandals, Blame Big Government

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Folks, this is precisely why the size and scope and powers that the administrations have acquired, this is why that is so damn dangerous.  You’re seeing it play out in real time.  You’re seeing it playing out right in front of your eyes.  I suppose it’s natural to must point the finger at evil, despicable Obama and his henchmen.  That’s not an abnormal reaction; however, that totally ignores the fact that it wouldn’t matter if George Washington were running the federal leviathan today. Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Kathleen Parker writing at the Washington Compost today writes this:

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Obama can rattle some cages, though, and given his administration’s almost daily scandal production, he’s going to be a busy zookeeper for the foreseeable future. No sooner had the Benghazi, Libya, hearing concluded than the IRS story broke, followed by reports of the Justice Department probe. The latter’s investigation pertained to reporters’ phone records over a two-month period affecting four bureaus, including the AP’s congressional office, and more than 20 lines potentially used by hundreds of reporters and, significantly, their sources.

Americans accustomed to hating the media — a popular pastime of self-proclaimed “new media,” often meaning someone with an iPhone and a laptop — should stop hitting “snooze” on their wake-up call right about now. When the choice is between distrusting reporters and distrusting the government, there’s no contest, especially when the aggrieved are groups of people (tea partyers and self-proclaimed patriots) whose chief organizing principle is distrust of government.

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Reporters, though they are merely human with all the attendant imperfections, are fundamentally on the patriot team. They’re sort of like cops: You hate them when their blue lights appear in the rear view, but you love them when something goes bump in the night.

Though some journalists and even some institutions can be politically biased, a news organization exists for the purpose of reporting on organized power, especially the government. [Mike: This is what I was talking about earlier. You have to have the freedom of the press, not meaning it’s got to be printed, but meaning the exchange of information, truthful exchange of information.] If tea party people worry that government is bearing down on them through its confiscatory powers via the IRS, then they have double reason for concern when the media are threatened.

Who in the White House or Congress will be willing to speak off the record if they fear being exposed to or by the Justice Department? This isn’t only outrageous; it is dangerous.

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Mike:  I’m on Parker’s side here.  I think Parker is the one that is onto something.  While I might agree that if you sign the contract and agree to become a spook and work for the CIA, NSA, whatever you do is an open book.  You can’t have any secrets.  You’re on government time.  Whoever you’re emailing or whoever it is you’re calling is then subject to review and clandestine review if necessary, eavesdropping if it has to be, spying.  That I don’t have an issue with.  Sensitive information has always been passed by those in authority and power to those who are charged with the task or who have accepted the task of reporting on those in power.

AG:  Is there a line, though?  When do you cross the line?  Is that for the reporters to decide, the public to decide, the government officials to decide?  Where is that line where the CIA or FBI asks the AP to keep a story silent because it has to do with protecting American lives, whether abroad or domestic?  Who makes that call?  Is that the line in terms of when to or not to pass secret information to reporters, to the press?

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Mike:  As Parker says:

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The government can legitimately investigate journalists in the interest of national security, as has been claimed here. Officials say that an AP story last May about a failed al-Qaeda plot raised flags about potentially dangerous leaks. But there is a serious question whether the AP situation warranted such a massive and covert search.

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Mike:  She says, this is all about national security.  You have these instances here where it may be necessary to check up on what a reporter is doing, find out who they’re commiserating with, who they’re calling, where they’re getting their information from and what have you in the interest of national security.  The interest of national security, though, can be portrayed and can be defined as almost anything that the investigator wants to look at.  It could be a charge on a Visa card.  [mocking] “What’s the AP doing ordering pizza from this guy?  We’ve been monitoring that guy, too.  You know what he’s been doing?  He’s been going to a mosque.  You know where he’s been going to mosque?  He’s been going to mosque where there are some strange characters.  We have people monitoring that.  I think we better have a look at what else he’s doing.”  This stuff just smells.  The whole damn thing just smells.

AG:  Mike, on the flipside of that, what do you do then about claims that the government, through leaks, is scaring the public and trying to reinforce the idea of national security or instituting policies that hamper civil liberties through leaking of we’re going to raise the terror threat level assessment to code red from code orange?  The flipside of the public having that information is that the government can then use leaks selectively to scare the public into, in essence, obedience.

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Mike:  Let’s look at it from the reverse side.  Can the public scare the government into obedience?  Even if we know what it is they’re doing, all too many times they’re going to continue doing it.  [mocking] “Citizen, you don’t know what you’re talking about.  Citizen, you need to pipe down.  Leave it to the adults here that wear the big girl and big boy panties.  We know what we’re doing.”  That’s what Kathleen Parker concludes.

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Out of fairness, early reaction to these revelations has focused on the incompetence of the Obama administration rather than any sinister intent. Similarly, the administration’s incorrect reporting of events in Benghazi are claimed to have been the product of miscommunication and inter-agency turf squabbles rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead the public heading into the presidential election.

Whatever.

Pending a verdict from investigators investigating investigators, it is abundantly clear that something is awry at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., not least of which is an apparent failure to understand the basic principles of American governance. Incompetence may be an explanation, but it is hardly reassuring.

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Mike:  I actually think that the incompetence explanation or that the web of deceit explanation is far more likely to actually be the case than there is some malicious intent, although, again, to claim that something is national security, according to this government, as I pointed out a moment ago, almost everything can be national security of some sort.  That’s a pretty lame, flimsy excuse to be running around subpoenaing phone records of people that are in the business of keeping tabs on big brother.  I also temper that with the understanding that as long as you’re going to have an entity that’s going to spend $3.9 trillion in the calendar period known as one year, you are going to have all kinds of instances like this.  I don’t care who it is that’s running the ship.  Now, is President Obama doing a fine and marvelous job in being the most — remember, he was going to be the most transparent administration in the history of transparent administrations. I think the verdict is in on that and I don’t believe — although we do know an awful lot of things that have happened and we can squawk about them.

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Folks, this is precisely why the size and scope and powers that the administrations have acquired, this is why that is so damn dangerous.  You’re seeing it play out in real time.  You’re seeing it playing out right in front of your eyes.  I suppose it’s natural to must point the finger at evil, despicable Obama and his henchmen.  That’s not an abnormal reaction; however, that totally ignores the fact that it wouldn’t matter if George Washington were running the federal leviathan today.  If he couldn’t dismantle it, would this kind of stuff happen?  We know that it happened in the Reagan administration.  We know when there was a great chief executive who was genuinely concerned about the Constitution, about the people’s liberties, we know that it happened.  So don’t feed me that line that this is all just about the evil that is Obama.  It is about the evil that is big government, unbelievably large, gargantuan, ginormous government out of control.  No man can possibly — the only force in the known universe that could control this would be God himself.

End Mike Church Show Transcript