If you can judge a man by his friends, surely you can judge a president by the complaints he cares about most. By that rule, it is revealing that President Obama, beset by scandals and anger across the land, is making the care and feeding of the media his first priority.
The president ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to meet with journalists upset over prosecutors seizing Associated Press phone records and labeling a Fox News reporter a potential “co-conspirator” in a leak case. Obama also ordered Holder to solicit proposals for changing the rules governing such cases — and did it publicly to demonstrate his concern about “government overreach.”
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Leave it to the media barons to miss the irony — and the joke at their expense. The president who has made government overreach the defining issue of his tenure is now concerned about it when it gores their ox. Aren’t they special!
Even more telling, Holder’s demand that the meeting be off the record didn’t bother some of the credulous people normally regarded as cynics. The Washington Post, one of the few organizations to attend, reported in breathtaking fashion that Holder “completely endorsed the president’s statement that reporters should not be at legal risk for doing their job.”
To continue reading Michael Goodwin's column in the New York Post, click here.
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