White House Did Not Know of DoJ Secret Seizure of Associated Press Records

Attorney General John Mitchell [Correction: That's Eric Holder]

Update III: The attorney general seems to be proud of how little he knows about the AP and IRS scandals (though the IRS affair is no scandal), writes Milbank.

Update II: Holder says he recused himself from phone records seizure, begging the question who is running the U.S. DoJ. Greenwald calls the Justice Department's pursuit of AP's phone records both extreme and dangerous. Civil liberties groups and journalists blast the action.

Update: See Turley's Nixonian or Obamaesque? Obama Administration Spied on Associated Press Editors and Reporters

There came a man who did not know.

When President Obama nominated Eric Holder to serve as the 82nd attorney general of the United States in 2009, voters had every right to expect a jurist committed to the rule of law and protecting the liberties of American citizens.

As each story of DoJ prosecutorial misconduct appears amid the near abandonment of an activist U.S. Dept of Justice, Civil Rights division seeking out bad political players in protection of civil liberties, the latest revelation that the U.S. Justice Department secretly obtained the phone records of the Associated Press reporters and editors is more than troubling.

Wow, secretly obtaining records. How did the DoJ do that, one might wonder. Secret warrants?

As Buzzfeed's Ben Smith writes, "Less than four months into President Barack Obama’s second term, the hazy perception of a government reaching further and further into individuals’ lives in an era of broad new technological surveillance and power has turned into what may be the defining critique of his Administration."

Here's the Monday evening statement from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney (from The Atlantic, and not to be found on the White House site) explaining:

Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP. We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department. Any questions about an ongoing criminal investigation should be directed to the Department of Justice.

Who knew defending the Fourth Amendment and being President was so difficult?

As noted in The Hill, not our president and not our attorney general.

"The AP believes the records seizure was related to a leak investigation regarding a 2012 story about the CIA foiling a bomb plot in Yemen. The Obama administration has aggressively investigated the disclosure of classified anti-terror information in recent years, subpoenaing journalists from the New York Times and Washington Post."

A leak? So, the DoJ is like plumbers ... fixing the leaks.

Notes Philip Bump: "In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President Gary Pruitt said there could be 'no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications.'"

Well, the Obama U.S. DoJ is better than a Romney-Ryan DoJ would be, I think.

Reason over Message

With the rise of the public relations industry American politics—from the municipal alderperson to the chief executive—has been reduced to the point where a vacuous Sarah Palin can be talked about as a contender for the president of the United States.

In politics as in marketing, the overriding concern is to deliver a message to create and manage a brand, be it a product like a snow-blower or a political candidate like George W. Bush.

Managing a brand is done through delivering through every utterance, every visual image, every fleeting impression: A message; like strength or family-friendly, some such positive attribute, or negative attribute if you're referring to an opponent.

We have come to adapt this message imperative so unthinkingly that in discussions of matters of public policy, facts, logic, rights and history are of no concern for many in our dying democracy. We live in a make-believe world of messages and visual impressions.

Think that possession of pot should be lowered to a $10 ticket or be completely legalized, and the response from those most vested in message-speak will be: We're sending the wrong message.

Withdraw from Afghanistan: Wrong message. And so on.

How about a trial for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM)? No, KSM will deliver the wrong message at trial. And the trial itself is delivering the wrong message to terrorists everywhere.

Leonard Pitts Jr eviscerates such nonsense in his column this morning.

Pitts quotes Robert H. Jackson's eloquent opening statement at the Nuremberg trials of NAZIs on November 21, 1945, in serving as Chief of Counsel for the United States.

That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.

Today, it is thought by the Glenn Becks, the Rudys and Republican Parties of the world, that such phenomena as Reason and the Rule of Law apparently deliver the wrong message, which is what is really important.

Attorney General Eric Holder deserves respect for apparently not giving a damn about message, in favor of Reason and the Rule of Law.

- via mal contends

Innocence Is No Defense

Update: See GOP Returns To "White Voter Strategy" for a look at why profiling and racism plays.

Oh yeah, Henry Louis Gates Jr is an innocent man. An insignificant detail not mentioned by those who cheerlead all the progress we have made in race relations and defend the cop who persecuted an innocent man.

Bob Herbert reminds us this morning of this minor detail of Prof Gates' innocence and the propensity of cops to target people of color.

No one is immune. Colin Powell told Larry King that he had been profiled many times. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke last week about how humiliated he felt as a college student when a cop made him stop his car and open the trunk so it could be searched for weapons.

Young, old, innocent as the day is long — it doesn’t matter. Your skin color can leave you perpetually vulnerable to a sudden and devastating criminal injustice.

Well, Gates like Colin Powell and Attorney General Eric Holder is black; so I guess he had it coming. We just need to ignore such distasteful facts like the man's innocence and understand the perpetrator because he wears a uniform and a badge.