Steve Benen: Holder moves to protect reporters’ records
Time for a quick quiz. Last spring, much of the political media slipped into a frenzy for a few weeks, telling the public that the Obama White House was ensnared in three “big,” “mushrooming” scandals at the same time. Nine months later, can you name all three?
One was the IRS controversy, which turned out to be meaningless. The second was the Benghazi attack from the year before, and more fair-minded people would have to agree that the allegations and conspiracy theories involving this story turned out to be baseless.
The third was … what exactly? Even at the time, the third was a little fuzzy, but for more of the political media, it was the Justice Department subpoenaing reporters’ phone logs as part of a leak investigation. It was difficult to characterize this as a proper political scandal – most of the White House’s GOP critics had no qualms with the subpoenas – but much of the media decided it’d be more fun to say there were three “scandals,” instead of two, since three ostensibly makes a pattern.
More here: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/holder-moves-protect-reporters-records
Found on the Obama Diary
