http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7374
Drip, drip, drip. And then the deluge.
After that the roof falls in. The perfect storm dashing Barack Obama’s second term onto the rocks is not the consequence of a sudden squall. This storm has been a long time coming.
The White House still doesn’t get it. Sending the president out to make another speech won’t change anything. Calling in a favored few to listen to more bloviating won’t do it, either. Neither will sacking Eric Holder, which is an idea whose time has come, but that would only buy a little time, with the emphasis on little.
The president may be tempted to cast the perfect storm as a matter of national security. When his speech to the National Defense University, declaring that the war against the terrorists was over because he had vanquished all the bad guys, landed with the thud of a noisy dud, he invited a gaggle of media elites to the White House for a session of the familiar argle-bargle. That didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. Mr. Obama’s administration is the enemy “foreign and domestic” the founding documents warned us about.
An invitation to the White House is ordinarily the invitation no good citizen declines without a very good reason. If a president, or one of his deputies, summons a citizen to come to the aid of the government, a good citizen catches the next streetcar to Pennsylvania Avenue, even if the streetcar is a bus. This time it’s fashionable to say thanks, but no thanks. Eric Holder’s invitation to media executives to “air concerns and exchange ideas” is not necessary because if he wants to hear the concerns he can read about them in the morning papers. Meetings to “ensure that First Amendment rights are respected by the Department of Justice” are not necessary, either, nor are conversations with news executives, lawyers and intelligence and investigative ‘experts’.”
The First Amendent needs no explanatory help from politicians, lawyers or anyone else. The language of the amendment, the cornerstone and guarantor of all the other rights of Americans, is as plain as the language of the Gospel, written so that the humblest among us can understand it. Presidents and their administrations have understood the words of the First Amendment for two centuries, with the further understanding that trifling with the words and meanings is always reckless and foolish.