There's a reason it's called the First Amendment: Americans want a free and energetic press corps, not a Mainstream Media chorus full of kiss-up sycophants to the President and the powerful, but many in MSM don't care -until Holder & DOJ over-stepped, and even then, some "journalists" can't put Constitution first over their love for Obama: The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza calls out media Obama kiss-ups in public re James Rosen case, while Balt. Sun media critic David Zuirawik deconstructs Obama & Co.'s obsession with Fox News -and attempts to marginalize it- by simply letting facts and Roger Ailes' own words appear in print: "Roger Ailes grabs moral high ground over Obama on phone, email seizures. Memo to Fox staffers shows character, righteousness, leadership"

Roger Ailes grabs moral high ground over Obama on phone, email seizures baltimoresun.com/entertainment/…
— Fredric U. Dicker (@fud31) May 24, 2013

This is not a partisan issue. Obama will be gone in 3.5 years. God willing, we reporters will be living with these rules for decades.
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) May 25, 2013

This is dumbest & most frightening take I've read on Rosen matter & I fear it's hardening into the liberal position: m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/201…
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) May 25, 2013

So going to a judge & falsely accusing someone of a crime in order to search their email is now "pro forma."
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) May 25, 2013

But if that's all really true, it's WORSE than we thought. It means the gov lied to get Rosen's emails and FBI agent Reyes perjured himself.
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) May 25, 2013

This is not a partisan issue. Obama will be gone in 3.5 years. God willing, we reporters will be living with these rules for decades.
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) May 25, 2013

There's a reason it's called the First Amendment: Americans want a free and energetic press corps, not a Mainstream Media chorus full of kiss-up sycophants to the President and the powerful, but many in MSM don't care -until Holder & DOJ over-stepped, and even then, some "journalists" can't put Constitution first over their love for Obama: The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza calls out media Obama kiss-ups in public re James Rosen case, while Balt. Sun media critic David Zuirawik deconstructs Obama & Co.'s obsession with Fox News -and attempts to marginalize it- by simply letting facts and Roger Ailes' own words appear in print: "Roger Ailes grabs moral high ground over Obama on phone, email seizures. Memo to Fox staffers shows character, righteousness, leadership"

Baltimore Sun
Roger Ailes grabs moral high ground over Obama on phone, email seizures
Memo to Fox staffers shows character, righteousness, leadership
By David Zuirawik, The Baltimore Sun
6:12 p.m. EDT, May 23, 2013

The Obama White House has been trying to de-legitimize Fox News almost from the day it took office. Remember the media blitz of 2009 launched by then White House Communications Director Anita Dunn?

I stood with Fox on that one on principle and came away impressed with the almost tribal unity that Roger Ailes inspired in his troops in the face of White House pressure.

Read the rest of Zuirawik's column at:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/z-on-tv-blog/bal-roger-ailes-rosen-obama-moral-20130523,0,6047321.story

Such a great closing, and not just because I agree with it 100%::

But I am going to rejoin the battle, because what the White House is doing is truly in a league with Nixon. The difference is that we now have a dumbed-down, wimped-out and suck-up press compared to the one Nixon faced. And what passes for media criticism is, in the main, even more spineless and pathetic.

Too many of the press folks, especially in Washington, are all too happy to kiss up to the White House rather than doing their jobs as Rosen has. Or, maybe they just don't have his dedication and courage.

-----
Ryan Lizza  @RyanLizza  https://twitter.com/RyanLizza

Read his three most recents columns on this subject here:

The New Yorker

May 20, 2013

BLOG: NEWS DESK

THE D.O.J. VERSUS JAMES ROSEN

Here is the full forty-four-page Justice Department application for the search warrant of the Gmail account of Fox News's James Rosen.

By Ryan Lizza

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/the-doj-versus-journalist-gmail.html

May 21, 2013

BLOG: NEWS DESK

THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND FOX NEWS’S PHONE RECORDS

The Obama Justice Department has seized the phone records of numbers that are associated with White House staffers and, apparently, with Fox News reporters.

By Ryan Lizza

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/the-justice-department-and-fox-newss-phone-records.html

May 24, 2013

BLOG: NEWS DESK

HOW PROSECUTORS FOUGHT TO KEEP ROSEN’S WARRANT SECRET

The Obama Administration fought to keep a search warrant for James Rosen’s private e-mail account secret.

By Ryan Lizza

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/how-justice-fought-to-keep-rosens-warrant-secret.html

Expect more New Yorkers in Broward, as NY Post reveals: GOV PLOTS SECRET TAX HIKE ON RICH

I've highlighted below in blue the aspects of the article that I thought

you'd find of particular interest!

It's as if Gov. David Patterson never learned the lesson of why so many

people left New York State in the first place in the early '70's, which was

responsible for so many tens of thousands of New Yorkers flocking to

South Florida, and sometimes it seemed, all into North Miami Beach

on NE 163rd Street, with their orange license plates with blue numbers

and letters.

And their kids became my classmates at Fulford Elementary and J.F.K.

Junior High, yet they still acted like the Mets, Jets and Knicks winning

their respective championship was, somehow, the natural order of things,

and that the Dolphins success under Don Shula was a fluke.

That was SO grating and irritating!

Obviously, demographics being what they were then, I knew lots of

ex-New Yorkers in North Miami Beach in 1972 when I was eleven

-and first got Dolphin season tickets- who were still convinced that Joe

Namath would, single-handedly, defeat the Dolphins and prevent an

undefeated season. Nope!

Meanwhile, forty years later, the Jets still haven't returned to the Super Bowl.

------------------------------------------

New York Post

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03232009/news/columnists/gov_plots_secret_tax_hike_on_rich_160855.htm

Fredric U. Dicker

EXCLUSIVE

March 23, 2009

GOV. PATERSON and legislative Democrats have secretly agreed on an $8 billion, two- year tax hike on individuals making more than $500,000 a year that will "sunset" around the time he plans to run for election in 2010, legislative sources told The Post.

Also under intense discussion yesterday as lawmakers rushed to complete a budget by April 1 is a proposal to raise the state's 4 percent sales tax to 4.5 percent the total of which would jump to close to 10 percent in parts of the state with the addition of local sales taxes.

PLUS: Paterson Takes Huge Hit in Poll

The sales-tax hike, too, would sunset at the end of next year or in early 2011, legislative Democrats said.

While Paterson has repeatedly claimed he was against a "millionaires' tax" on the very wealthy and hasn't backed a sales-tax hike, the sources said he was privately backing both.

The current top tax rate is 6.85 percent for all incomes over $25,000 a year. Sources could not say yesterday what the rate would rise to for incomes over $500,000.

"Paterson has told everyone he really wants the taxes, but he wants it to appear to the public that he's against them," a senior legislative official said.

"Then, next year, when he's running, he'll say we can afford to phase them out so he can claim that he's a tax cutter."

Billions in other tax hikes proposed by Paterson in December, including huge increases in levies on insurance policies and health services, have been left in the budget for the fiscal year beginning April 1.

The budget, which is meant to close a multibillion-dollar deficit made less severe by billions of dollars in last-minute federal stimulus aid, is also expected to cut several major state programs, including Medicaid, deeper than many have expected.

The proposed cuts have angered many Democratic lawmakers, as well as the powerful unions that regularly bankroll their campaigns.

Democrats who control the Legislature and the governor's office for the first time since the late 1930s plan to ram the budget through with virtually no debate or scrutiny using special "messages of necessity" issued by Paterson that will circumvent the legally required three-day waiting period designed to give lawmakers, and the public, time to review proposed new laws, several sources said.

As lieutenant governor and Senate minority leader, Paterson strongly opposed using the "messages" to cut off debate.

A Paterson spokesman yesterday refused to say whether the governor would use the procedure to ram through the budget.

The budget plan, meanwhile, is expected to shift longstanding state commitments from wealthy, Republican-oriented Long Island school districts to poorer districts in New York City and upstate, potentially angering suburban Senate Democrats whose votes will be vital for the budget to pass.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

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