It All Depends On Whose Ox Is Gored

The Detroit Free Press editorial page, long a guaranteed apologist and defender of Obama and his priorities is finally getting somewhat annoyed with his administration as it interferes with the media's jealously guarded privileges.

Apparently it takes a direct attack on the media before the media lose their full-on lapdog mode and start to again fulfill their responsibilities as a free press.

The Detroit Free Press: Editorial: An attack on the press is an attack against us all

It’s hard to think of any justification for the Justice Department to have snatched up thousands of phone records from the Associated Press, but there had better be a forthright explanation coming.

From Attorney General Eric Holder, and from President Barack Obama, who should probably be dusting off résumés of Holder’s potential replacements.

This is government intrusion at a level that goes far beyond the issue of press protections. If federal law enforcement feels empowered to rifle through journalists’ private phone records, ostensibly looking for evidence of a government leak, then nothing would restrain similar action against other citizens.

Of course, the editorial being from the Free Press, they had to pull back their angst and defend Obama in the very same editorial, perhaps out of fear of an IRS audit if they criticized him too much:

Of course, some conservatives have leapt to an illogical conclusion: that Obama is Richard Nixon, whose abuse of government power was his undoing.

That’s absurd, but so would any suggestion that these transgressions don’t warrant serious inquiry, and serious consequences for those guilty of over-stepping their bounds.

Hmm, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, IRS and AP phone tapping and he's still not, at least in the minds of the Freep, as bad as Nixon. True enough. Nixon certainly did not enjoy this level of media sycophancy to cover his misdeeds.

Apparently the Freep will need to undergo a far bigger goring of its ox before it ceases to be a part of the Obama lapdog press.