AP: Justice Department Cross The Line!

Journalists are outraged over U.S. Justice Departments collecting of phone records. The investigation into classified leaks to the press has the double sword aimed at President Barack Obama.

The Associated Press is expressing outrage over the U.S. Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder's involvement in collecting phone records from the junk food media.

Someone's leaking secrets and the Justice Department wants a stop to it! That person could get time in the iron college if they're caught with classified information.

The backlash is coming from the media.

The media is saying that the White House and Justice Department stepped over the line when it comes to "freedom of the press".

Another week of scandal for President Barack Obama.

The low approved Congress once again are going to ignore the sequester cuts, infrastructure failures and issues that matter for the "culture wars" that makes politicians even more less liked among constituents.

Conservatives are already pressing Republicans to put the Articles of Impeachment on the president, five months into his second term. Say didn't we hear this "impeachment" stuff during President Barack Obama's first term?

Well here's the rundown of the situation.

The Justice Department seized office telephone records for 20 AP reporters for a two-month period in 2012, describing the acts as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news-gathering operations.

The AP reported that the Justice Department would not say why it sought the records, but news sources noted that the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney's Office was conducting a criminal investigation into a May 7, 2012, AP story about a CIA operation that stopped a terrorist plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane.

Junk food media figures want Attorney General Eric Holder to step down after news broke of a massive investigation into leaks to the press. The U.S. Justice Department looked into the phone records of the Associated Press.

CEO Gary Pruitt said "These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP's newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know."

The U.S. attorney's office in Washington responded that federal investigators seek records from news outlets only after making "every reasonable effort to obtain information through alternative means.

Last year, the conservative agitators were upset that leaked information about terrorist plots being foiled were told to the press. They wanted an investigation into who leaked the info.

So what do the federal attorneys do?

They find out the problems.

And now the very same agitators from the conservative media continue to flourish in their ridiculous grandstanding over all things Obama.

In order to quarrel the outrage, Attorney General Eric Holder recused himself from involvement in a Justice Department leak investigation that secretly acquired telephone records of Associated Press journalists.

But in response to questions at a news conference, he defended the department’s conduct in probing what he described as one of the damaging leaks he has seen.

President Barack Obama and Press Secretary Jay Carney are getting hammered by controversies.

In a letter to Holder and his deputy Tuesday, a media coalition rejected what it called “an overreaching dragnet for newsgathering materials,” demanded that the Justice Department destroy the phone records and called on Congress to pass a federal shield law. The Washington Post joined more than 50 other news organizations in endorsing the letter.

Holder said he testified in June 2012 that he was interviewed by the FBI in connection with the probe into a leak of classified information to the AP. “To avoid any potential appearance of a conflict of interest,” he said, “I recused myself from this matter.”

Since then, he said, the investigation has been conducted by the FBI under the direction of the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and the supervision of the deputy attorney general, James M. Cole.

“The decision to seek media toll records in this investigation was made by the Deputy Attorney General consistent with Department regulations and policies,” the Justice Department said in a statement shortly before Holder made his remarks.

Holder said in reply to questions that he does not know “all that went into the formulation of the subpoena” for the phone records, but that “this was a very serious leak — a very, very serious leak.” He said that since he became a prosecutor in 1976, “this is among the top two or three serious leaks that I’ve ever seen.” He added that “it put the American people at risk” and that “trying to determine who was responsible for that required very aggressive action.”

He said he was “confident that the people who are involved in this investigation ... followed all of the appropriate Justice Department regulations and did things according to DOJ rules.”

Holder spoke in a joint news conference with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to announce unrelated law enforcement actions by the government’s Medicare Fraud Strike Force.

In a sweeping and unusual move, the Justice Department secretly obtained two months’ worth of telephone records of journalists working for the Associated Press as part of a year-long investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a failed al-Qaeda plot last year. The records listed outgoing calls from more than 20 work and personal phone lines in April and May 2012, the news agency said. It said the number of employees who used those lines during that period is unknown but that more than 100 journalists work in the targeted offices.

Conservative agitators such as this guy are claiming the president is "targeting" conservatives with brutal force.

Federal authorities obtained cellular, office and home telephone records of individual reporters and an editor, as well as records from AP general office numbers in Washington, New York and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters covering Congress, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary B. Pruitt said Monday. He called the Justice Department’s actions a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into newsgathering activities.

The Washington Post also notes Justice Department guidelines require that subpoenas of records from news organizations must be approved personally by the attorney general. Holder’s office did not reply Monday to repeated requests for comment.

Republicans also quickly condemned the targeting of journalists and sought to portray the Justice Department’s actions as part of a pattern of Obama administration overreach, noting that the Internal Revenue Service was already enmeshed in a scandal over the reported targeting of conservative groups.

“Coming within a week of revelations that the White House lied to the American people about the Benghazi attacks and the IRS targeted conservative Americans for their political beliefs, Americans should take notice that top Obama administration officials increasingly see themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they don’t have to answer to anyone,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Whatever, Issa!

This is another reason to why it's important to fight against the Republicans and their conservative allies in the junk food media. They're scared of change,literally! This stuff is going to bring the worst out of the Republicans.

Republicans are desperate for the control of Congress. They're going to distract the nation away from their horrible failures as leaders to single out President Barack Obama with these stupid issues.

Yeah, I said it: STUPID ISSUES!