When the Press Starts Pressing, the Pressured Start Pressing the Press
by Steve Young

Steve Young

March 7, 2006 /HOLLYWOOD (apj.us)/ Okay. The above is a tortured attempt at profundity, but what better administration to throw down the torture gauntlet with?

With the press beginning to actually print what is really happening as opposed to what Vice President office personnel leaks, the gloves are off. The Bush White House has always had their own unique style of what they want reported, and how to report it.

With this administration, it's not wrong to torture; it's wrong to show pictures of it.

With this administration, it's not wrong for this president to lie about getting information that he said he didn't get; it's wrong to show the president getting the information.

With this administration, it's not wrong for police to delay talking to a shooter; it's wrong for the press to talk about it with the president's spokesman.

With this administration, it's not the leaks; it's which leaks.

This administration will never hunt you down for writing the lies they tell (or pay) you to write.

For the crime does not lay with the facts, it's in the spreading of them. If you tell the lies the way they told you too, you'd get poems and love letters sent to your cell.

With this administration, it's not wrong to out CIA agents as payback for telling the world they used lies to bring us into a unprovoked war; it's wrong to tell the world they did.

For that, their modus operandi is to use their partisan hit men to demonize their targets. Ruining the mark's reputation and life is seen as a fringe benefit, all the while never admitting the administration own culpability.

But finally this administration has decided to get honest. No changes in their manipulative ways. They're just sort of/kind of admitting one of them.

They're goin' after the press.

And they're goin' after them with the big guns... the United States Department of Justice.

The Right Wing Talk Machine has long labeled anyone who dare reveal truths that splatter this president with his own missteps as traitors, lunatics, dangers to those in harm's way, or-worst of all-French lovers. But now the Bush administration is cutting out the middle man and going hands on in their attempt to scare the juicers out of the hands of those whose job it is to squeeze the reality from propaganda.

The Bush administration has announced it will use the DoJ to target reporters under espionage laws.

"We need to protect the right to free speech and the First Amendment, and the president is doing that," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy. "But, at the same time, we do need to protect classified information which helps fight the war on terror."

The message is clear: you go Pentagon Papers on us, and we'll go George Orwell all over you!

CIA Director Porter Goss is ready to sick his NPs (News Police) on the Fourth Estate.
"It is my aim, and it is my hope, that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information," Goss told a Senate committee.

And they're going far back further than 1984 to start their truth sweep.

The Justice Department has said that reporters can be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act for receiving and publishing classified information. A Catch 22 amendment was added in 1950, expanded the law, forbidding reporters from-da-da-dum-keeping it to themselves.

Though the administration isn't saying it in so many words. It's as clear as the lies coming out of their mouths.

Don't f$#@ with us.

Steve Young is a Senior Fellow at the Extreme Far Centrist Foundation' Political Husbandry Conservation Centre and Stereo Repair. In his spare time, he is also an author, comedy writer, columnist, LA talk show host and author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful."(What? You STILL haven't bought it? Then visit http://www.greatfailure.com/). You can also check out the satirical side of Steve every Sunday in the LA Daily News.