Bill Maher: Obama "Perhaps The Worst President" On Press Freedom

[Webster]

....the way Bill Maher's been going of late, what are the odds 1600 Pennsylvania'll sic the IRS on him in retaliation...

(MSN News/The Hill) Bill Maher is throwing some shade on President Obama's credentials as a supposed champion of freedom of the press.

The host of HBO's "Real Time" sat down Friday to discuss media coverage of secret government work with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, one of the journalists centrally involved in bringing revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to light.

"I don't understand why he is perhaps the worst president we've had on clamping down on the press," Maher said.

"He's used the Espionage Act more than any other president, right?" Maher added.

Other members of the media have blasted the Obama administration's treatment of journalists.

This week former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson told a Senate panel that Obama officials treat investigative journalists and their sources like "enemies of the state." "The job of getting at the truth has never been more difficult," she said during the confirmation hearing for Loretta Lynch, the attorney general nominee.

Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice secretly seized phone records from The Associated Press and also moved to prosecute a New York Times reporter, James Risen. A former Central Intelligence Agency officer was convicted of espionage this week for giving Risen sensitive data on a secret CIA program.

Maher referenced a comment from 2013 when Obama said he would not describe Snowden as a "patriot." "Then he [Obama] went on to say, hey, a lot of this stuff that he was talking about I was gonna do," Maher said as members of the audience chuckled. "But it seems like it really wasn't going to happen without" Snowden coming forward, Maher added.

Thoughts?

 

[+paradox]

he speaks the truth most of the time and when he speaks the truth that you agree on, then he's all good in your eyes?

united state's image of being free with freedoms and liberty is a bunch of fairy-tales to keep the brainwashed, well, brainwashed and to keep them going as slaves for the man... united states might be "freer" than other countries, what ever you might think that means, but it's not what they claim the u.s. is in reality, just like israel and how people think israel is free with freedoms and liberties, but in reality, it's a prison and a dictatorship by the zionist and the military oppressors...

i don't agree with him all the time, just like jon stewert, but at least i respect both of their truths that they put out in the face of the opposition...

 

[Webster]

he speaks the truth most of the time and when he speaks the truth that you agree on, then he's all good in your eyes?

No, sometimes, Freeze, he actually says something I agree with...your point?