It's important to remember that Obama's formative years were spent in
Indonesia. His white mother worked for the Ford Foundation. Americans who
work for these wealthy people's charitable foundations in countries peopled
by brown and black people all over the world, are a separate caste. He then
returned to the US where he attended an elite private school, and he went on
to attend elite colleges and universities. How could someone with that
background, identify with working class black people? Obama is intelligent
and ambitious, and he is living his American dream.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 9:51 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: How the Obama Administration Laid the
Groundwork for Trump's Coming Crackdown on the Press
In 2008, my thinking, as best as I can recall, was that Barack Obama was
definitely the better of the two choices offered to us by the Oligarchy
Corporate Establishment. His ability to speak in a clear, confident voice
put him heads and shoulders above his predecessor. Of course, as I've
mentioned before, his dumping of Pastor White, his children's God Father,
had been a strong factor in my beginning to mistrust his integrity. So as I
watched this "Black" president become Whiter and Whiter, I decided that he
was merely a darker Bill Clinton.
Despite his noble words, Obama did not seem to connect with the Working
Class, much less Black Americans.
Then, much as Bill Clinton sold us out to the NAFTA, Barack Obama sold
Americans out to the Corporate Drug Czars with his Great Obama Care.
It will be interesting to watch where Barack Obama secures his future
following his stepping down.
One thing for certain, the Working Class cannot afford to provide the same
level of fine living that the Obama's have come to believe is their right.
When Obama is gone from the Capitol, my aim is to forget he ever sat in the
Oval Office. Don't look for him to be taking his place among the
peace-keepers and Earth Protectors, as Trump's Bully Boys begin to crack
heads in earnest.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/13/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
How the Obama Administration Laid the Groundwork for Trump's Comingsetback.
Crackdown on the Press Published on Tuesday, December 13, 2016 by
Freedom of the Press Foundation How the Obama Administration Laid the
Groundwork for Trump's Coming Crackdown on the Press by Trevor Timm
(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
In the summer of 2009, less than a year after President Obama took
office, one of the first orders of business for the newly empaneled
Senate Judiciary Committee was passing a long-stalled federal 'media
shield' bill, which would finally provide a uniform level of
protection to reporters who get subpoenaed to testify against their
sources in court.
The bill, which had previously been scuttled by Republican Congress,
now had strong support in a Democratic Congress, and seemingly, a
newly-elected Democratic president, who had co-sponsored an almost
identical bill when he was a senator.
But just as it looked like the bill would sail through Congress and
make its way to the president's desk, it was stopped in its tracks.
President Obama suddenly reversed course from his previous position
and announced he would oppose the bill if the Senate didn't carve out
a giant national security exception that would make the important
protections within it all but meaningless.
Sen. Arlen Specter, then a Republican, called Obama's reversal
"unacceptable" at the time, adding: "The White House's opposition to
the fundamental essence of this bill is an unexpected and significant
It will make it hard to pass this legislation." The Democrat's mainsubpoena in the future.
sponsor, Sen. Chuck Schumer expressed his dismay as well. National
security leak cases are usually the only cases the federal government
prosecutes that regularly ensnare journalists, so Obama's decision
essentially killed the bill.
Sadly, this incident was only the first of several moves by the Obama
administration that laid the groundwork for a potentially
unprecedented crackdown on the press by the incoming Trump administration.
In the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump was the most openly hostile
presidential candidate to press freedom we have seen in modern
history. But many of the tools that will be at Trump's disposal were
entrenched and expanded by the Obama administration.
While a strong federal shield bill quickly became a pipe dream under
Obama, there were still a patchwork of state laws and common law
privileges in some federal court districts that did provide some
protection to journalists who get called to testify against their
sources. Unfortunately, Obama's Justice Department then moved to
attack 'reporter's privilege' in the courts as well.
When Obama came into office, New York Times reporter and Pulitzer
Prize winner James Risen had been facing a subpoena under the Bush
administration for a story in his book about a spectacularly botched
CIA operation that handed over almost complete nuclear bomb blueprints
to Iran. Many were expecting the Obama's Justice Department, led by
then-Attorney General Eric Holder, to drop the subpoena. Instead they
renewed it, and in the process, ended up destroying reporter's
privilege in one of the most important federal circuits in the country.
After a district court ruled that Risen didn't have to testify against
his source because he was protected by a common law reporter's
privilege previously established in the Fourth Circuit, the Obama
administration took their case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
There, a three judge panel reversed the prior ruling and held that
reporter's privilege did not, in fact, exist. Risen would be forced to
testify-along with any other reporter the Justice Department decided to
The Obama administration eventually dropped their subpoena againstreporting.
Risen right before the trial because Risen was threatening to go to
jail rather than reveal his source, but the damage had already been
done. Obama's Justice Department had eviscerated important protections
for journalists in the federal court district that covers Virginia and
Maryland, where hundreds of thousands of national security workers-and
potential sources-live.
Under his newly-proposed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also an
avowed hater of the press, Trump is now free to subpoena reporters
working in the Fourth Circuit at will. The Justice Department's "media
guidelines" that supposedly restrict the Justice Department from
subpoenaing or surveilling reporters-updated by the Obama
administration after several other scandals involving going after
journalists-can potentially be ripped up on Trump's first day in
office. (Those guidelines also already contain gaping exception
involving National Security Letters that the Obama administration is
fighting Freedom of the Press Foundation in court to prevent from
releasing.)
But the by far the biggest danger from the Trump administration is how
they will decide to use the Espionage Act, the draconian and
unconstitutional World War I-era law, which was originally meant for
spies-not sources and whistleblowers.
Soon after taking office, Obama's Justice Department began to
prosecute more sources and whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than
all other administrations combined. Before 2009, only three
prosecutions had ever been attempted. One those prosecutions, Daniel
Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame (and one of our co-founders), ended
in mistrial due to government misconduct. The other two were quirky
cases that didn't seem to provide much in the way of precedent.
Starting in 2009, at least nine cases were brought under Attorney
General Holder, and national security journalists have described an
unprecedented 'chill' to their investigative reporting ever since.
Prosecuting journalists' sources under the Espionage Act is now built
into the system. As Politico's Peter Sterne detailed last week, while
Donald Trump has made a lot of noise about "open[ing] up our libel
law," it's Trump's ability to use the Espionage Act that journalists
should really be scared about.
And it's not just sources that will have to be worried about Espionage
Act prosecutions under the Trump administration; it's journalists as well.
While
we believe the law is patently unconstitutional when applied to the
publishers of secret information, at least three grand juries have
been empaneled in the last 70 years with the intention of prosecuting
journalists under the law. While no indictment has followed, there's
nothing stopping the Trump administration from attempting to be the
first.
Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department took the
unprecedented step of naming Fox News reporter James Rosen (different
than James Risen) as an unindicted "co-conspirator" to Espionage Act
charges in another leak case. The move was met with swift backlash
from press freedom advocates, and former Attorney General Eric Holder
later said he regretted the move. But it's now a blueprint that could
easily be followed by the Trump administration to stifle adversarial
There's no doubt that adversarial investigative reporting will besources in court.
crucial to hold the Trump administration accountable. As our board
member Glenn Greenwald has written, leaks and whistleblowing have
never been more important or more noble. This is why at Freedom of the
Press Foundation, we are stepping up our efforts in 2017 to build
encryption tools and train journalists how to use digital security
techniques to protect their sources in the Trump era.
But unfortunately, in part due to moves made by the Obama
administration, reporters covering national security issues-and the
whistleblowers who are critical to the process-have never been under
more threat. And under Trump, it looks like it will only get worse.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Trevor Timm
Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. He is a writer, activist, and legal analyst
who specializes in free speech and government transparency issues. He
writes a weekly column for The Guardian and has also contributed to
The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy
Review, PBS MediaShift, and Politico. Follow him on Twitter:
@TrevorTimm Skip to main content //
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How the Obama Administration Laid the Groundwork for Trump's Coming
Crackdown on the Press Published on Tuesday, December 13, 2016 by
Freedom of the Press Foundation How the Obama Administration Laid the
Groundwork for Trump's Coming Crackdown on the Press by Trevor Timm
. 5 Comments
.
. (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
. In the summer of 2009, less than a year after President Obama took
office, one of the first orders of business for the newly empaneled
Senate Judiciary Committee was passing a long-stalled federal 'media
shield' bill, which would finally provide a uniform level of
protection to reporters who get subpoenaed to testify against their
. The bill, which had previously been scuttled by Republican Congress,setback.
now had strong support in a Democratic Congress, and seemingly, a
newly-elected Democratic president, who had co-sponsored an almost
identical bill when he was a senator.
. But just as it looked like the bill would sail through Congress and
make its way to the president's desk, it was stopped in its tracks.
President Obama suddenly reversed course from his previous position
and announced he would oppose the bill if the Senate didn't carve out
a giant national security exception that would make the important
protections within it all but meaningless.
. Sen. Arlen Specter, then a Republican, called Obama's reversal
"unacceptable" at the time, adding: "The White House's opposition to
the fundamental essence of this bill is an unexpected and significant
It will make it hard to pass this legislation." The Democrat's mainsubpoena in the future.
sponsor, Sen. Chuck Schumer expressed his dismay as well. National
security leak cases are usually the only cases the federal government
prosecutes that regularly ensnare journalists, so Obama's decision
essentially killed the bill.
Sadly, this incident was only the first of several moves by the Obama
administration that laid the groundwork for a potentially
unprecedented crackdown on the press by the incoming Trump administration.
In the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump was the most openly hostile
presidential candidate to press freedom we have seen in modern
history. But many of the tools that will be at Trump's disposal were
entrenched and expanded by the Obama administration.
While a strong federal shield bill quickly became a pipe dream under
Obama, there were still a patchwork of state laws and common law
privileges in some federal court districts that did provide some
protection to journalists who get called to testify against their
sources. Unfortunately, Obama's Justice Department then moved to
attack 'reporter's privilege' in the courts as well.
When Obama came into office, New York Times reporter and Pulitzer
Prize winner James Risen had been facing a subpoena under the Bush
administration for a story in his book about a spectacularly botched
CIA operation that handed over almost complete nuclear bomb blueprints
to Iran. Many were expecting the Obama's Justice Department, led by
then-Attorney General Eric Holder, to drop the subpoena. Instead they
renewed it, and in the process, ended up destroying reporter's
privilege in one of the most important federal circuits in the country.
After a district court ruled that Risen didn't have to testify against
his source because he was protected by a common law reporter's
privilege previously established in the Fourth Circuit, the Obama
administration took their case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
There, a three judge panel reversed the prior ruling and held that
reporter's privilege did not, in fact, exist. Risen would be forced to
testify-along with any other reporter the Justice Department decided to
The Obama administration eventually dropped their subpoena againstreporting.
Risen right before the trial because Risen was threatening to go to
jail rather than reveal his source, but the damage had already been
done. Obama's Justice Department had eviscerated important protections
for journalists in the federal court district that covers Virginia and
Maryland, where hundreds of thousands of national security workers-and
potential sources-live.
Under his newly-proposed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also an
avowed hater of the press, Trump is now free to subpoena reporters
working in the Fourth Circuit at will. The Justice Department's "media
guidelines" that supposedly restrict the Justice Department from
subpoenaing or surveilling reporters-updated by the Obama
administration after several other scandals involving going after
journalists-can potentially be ripped up on Trump's first day in
office. (Those guidelines also already contain gaping exception
involving National Security Letters that the Obama administration is
fighting Freedom of the Press Foundation in court to prevent from
releasing.)
But the by far the biggest danger from the Trump administration is how
they will decide to use the Espionage Act, the draconian and
unconstitutional World War I-era law, which was originally meant for
spies-not sources and whistleblowers.
Soon after taking office, Obama's Justice Department began to
prosecute more sources and whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than
all other administrations combined. Before 2009, only three
prosecutions had ever been attempted. One those prosecutions, Daniel
Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame (and one of our co-founders), ended
in mistrial due to government misconduct. The other two were quirky
cases that didn't seem to provide much in the way of precedent.
Starting in 2009, at least nine cases were brought under Attorney
General Holder, and national security journalists have described an
unprecedented 'chill' to their investigative reporting ever since.
Prosecuting journalists' sources under the Espionage Act is now built
into the system. As Politico's Peter Sterne detailed last week, while
Donald Trump has made a lot of noise about "open[ing] up our libel
law," it's Trump's ability to use the Espionage Act that journalists
should really be scared about.
And it's not just sources that will have to be worried about Espionage
Act prosecutions under the Trump administration; it's journalists as well.
While
we believe the law is patently unconstitutional when applied to the
publishers of secret information, at least three grand juries have
been empaneled in the last 70 years with the intention of prosecuting
journalists under the law. While no indictment has followed, there's
nothing stopping the Trump administration from attempting to be the
first.
Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department took the
unprecedented step of naming Fox News reporter James Rosen (different
than James Risen) as an unindicted "co-conspirator" to Espionage Act
charges in another leak case. The move was met with swift backlash
from press freedom advocates, and former Attorney General Eric Holder
later said he regretted the move. But it's now a blueprint that could
easily be followed by the Trump administration to stifle adversarial
There's no doubt that adversarial investigative reporting will be
crucial to hold the Trump administration accountable. As our board
member Glenn Greenwald has written, leaks and whistleblowing have
never been more important or more noble. This is why at Freedom of the
Press Foundation, we are stepping up our efforts in 2017 to build
encryption tools and train journalists how to use digital security
techniques to protect their sources in the Trump era.
But unfortunately, in part due to moves made by the Obama
administration, reporters covering national security issues-and the
whistleblowers who are critical to the process-have never been under
more threat. And under Trump, it looks like it will only get worse.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
/author/trevor-timm /author/trevor-timm/author/trevor-timm
Trevor Timm is a co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. He is a writer, activist, and legal analyst
who specializes in free speech and government transparency issues. He
writes a weekly column for The Guardian and has also contributed to
The Atlantic, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Harvard Law and Policy
Review, PBS MediaShift, and Politico. Follow him on Twitter:
@TrevorTimm
