Opinion:The Associated Press can’t complain because this administration’s hubris was fed by the mainstream media

Six months into his second administration, Barack Obama’s presidency has become overrun with scandal. The events of the past two weeks; the Benghazi hearings, the news about twelve revisions of the Benghazi talking points, the IRS scandal and the Justice Department’s attack on freedom of the press via the AP phone records, is a lot of “distractions” for an administration during the course of a four-year-term, however these three all flared up in a one week period. Presidents tend to have problems their second term--but Obama’s second term problems seemed jacked up on steroids.

The Obama administration may be buckling under the weight of its own hubris, but they had help. This administration’s hubris suckled at the breast of the mainstream media.

In Benghazi, the administration told a tale of events which suited their own purposes--reelection. And just to make their story look good, they paid for and ran advertising in the Muslim world, apologizing for a YouTube video we now know had nothing to do with the attack. They also threw the video’s creator in jail, where he still sits as a political prisoner of an administration who does not believe in the First Amendment. The cover-up of Benghazi was undertaken because the administration believed they could get away with it—after all they had always gotten away with it before.

When criticism of the Administration’s story line began to arise, those critics were told to back off, the President said they should back off, there was nothing to see, it’s all a political ploy. The mainstream media refused to look into the charges because Obama said it wasn’t so--and for eight months they backed him up.

It didn’t start with Benghazi; it began at the very beginning of his administration. Eric Holder dropped the charges against the New Black Panthers because his department felt that only Caucasians could commit voter intimidation, whistle blowers came out to say this justice department treated whites different from blacks. The media saw it as a non-story and Obama’s belief that he could get away with anything grew.

When other scandals began to break, Solyndra, Fast and Furious; the firing of an Inspector General who was investigating a personal friend of the President for misusing taxpayer dollars, when the $800 billion dollar stimulus was spent on useless pork, when the Obama Administration told lies about Obamacare, when the President made recess appointments even though the Senate was in session, when he sent our heroes to Libya without congressional approval or an exit plan--- every situation where a free press would investigate a government; the press neglected its duty. Instead, the mainstream media echoed the “move on, nothing to see here” coming out of the White House. And this administration’s hubris and sense of entitlement grew.

When Mitt Romney who, whether you agree with his politics or not, is a decent man, was attacked personally with lies from Obama’s campaign; that he hated women, he wanted people to drink dirty water, that he didn’t pay taxes, or he caused the cancer death of a steelworker’s wife, the press gave them a free ride. And still this administration’s hubris grew.

When grass roots Americans rose up to complain about the attack on personal freedoms and excessive government spending, the press joined with the administration ridiculing the people and their attacks on those Americans as racists, and when the President and Democratic Party members of Congress, including New York Senator Chuck Schumer, demanded the IRS investigate those grass roots Americans, President Obama and Congressional Progressives knew the press would protect him.

Something seemed to change two weeks ago when a 20+-year civil servant (and a life-long Democrat) testified before the Issa committee telling the country the truth about Benghazi, what it felt like to live through that horror. He told a story much different from the “official” media/administration tale that he was ordered to stay silent even to a member of Congress. He told us how he tried to correct the Administration’s lies and for that was demoted, ridiculed, and had any real authority taken away from him. The Administration still tries to tell us to move on, but this time it isn’t working.

Two days after that, we learned the IRS had been targeting this President’s political opponents in the Tea Parties, Jewish organizations and other religious groups. Though Obama’s opponents have made these charges on and off for the past three years, the press had ridiculed those who had been wronged---conspiracy theorists they were called. But this time instead of feeding this Administration’s hubris, they investigated and found that even Friday’s story was a lie, it wasn’t junior people in Cincinnati but a scandal that reached senior people in the IRS (and maybe higher).

It’s difficult to believe that career bureaucrats whose advancement is based on following established procedures would go rogue and target specific groups without direction from top IRS management. The fact that it was all done during the President’s reelection campaign makes it difficult to accept that there was not a high up in the administration or in the President’s campaign giving the orders to the IRS. This was too abhorrent a political act to believe that the orders didn’t come from someone in the Administration. The story of the Justice Department secretly obtaining the phone records of the Associated Press was poetic justice. There may have been nothing illegal about it because the DOJ obtained a warrant from a judge.

The DOJ was searching for who leaked information to the AP, saying it was a danger to U.S. security. The truth is that, based on an administration request, the Associated Press sat on the story for five days. Then, according to a report from the liberal Washington Post report, during a Monday morning meeting, the journalists were asked by White House officials to hold off on publishing the story for just one more day so the Administration could make the announcement.

The AP held the story for national security but published it when the only reason to hold it was for the Administration to get some glory.

The Associated Press published the story on Monday, and Tuesday John Brennan, now the CIA director, appeared on Good Morning America. He said that, because of the work of U.S. intelligence, the plot did not pose an active threat to the American public.

This was a frightening attack on the First Amendment freedom of the press, just as the Obamacare regulations about mandatory insurance for birth control and “day after pills,” etc., were an attack on the First Amendment right of freedom of religion. Why did the DOJ attack the freedom of the press? Because they could! After all, throughout all of the other scandals, throughout the attacks on our Constitution, the press fed this administration’s sense of entitlement by ignoring the wrong, the scandal, the abuse of power.

But this time the Obama administration attacked a major press organization. Immediately, the National Press Club complained about this affront to freedom of the press. The liberal media is complaining about this overreach of power.

In a way, they have no right to complain. The AP and their buddies in the Mainstream Media created this “monster” whose hubris makes them believe they can get away with anything. Every single time they had an opportunity to explore this Administration’s actions they shied away, thus feeding their sense of entitlement and invulnerability. So why are they surprised when, like the creation of Victor Frankenstein, their creation (which lives on arrogance and entitlement) attacks its creator-- the mainstream media?

Will the media’s desire for self-preservation force them to execute their responsibilities and thus seek the truth in all of these scandals? Or, after a few days of whining, will it once again allow this Administration to feed their arrogance and hubris on the breasts of the mainstream media?

Only time will tell.

Jeff Dunetz is the Editor/Publisher of the political blog “The Lid” (www.jeffdunetz.com). Jeff contributes to some of the largest political sites on the internet including American Thinker, Big Government, Big Journalism, NewsReal and Pajama’s Media, and has been a guest on national radio shows including G. Gordon Liddy, Tammy Bruce and Glenn Beck. Jeff lives in Long Island.