If The President Does It, It Isn't Illegal?

Okay, I take it back. Maybe it is worse than Watergate. At the very least it's eerily similar.

No, not the frantic hyperbolic garment-rending over Benghazi, but the Obama administration's alleged snooping into the personal records of journalists and reporters.

If true, this is bad. As Buzzfeed writes:

"Obama is personally obsessed with leaks, to the extent that his second chief of staff, Bill Daley, took as one of his central mandates a major and ill-fated plumbing expedition. Attorney General Eric Holder, who pressed the leak policy, is a trusted Obama insider.

"Today, the day the president denounced the Internal Revenue Service's 'outrageous' focus on Tea Party groups, the Associated Press revealed a Justice Department operation targeting its reporters' telephone records. These are not identical: The White House is referring questions about the AP phone records to the Justice Department. It remains unclear who knew about the IRS actions."

Sure, the Bush Crime Family wiretapped anybody they chose -- invaded library records, email accounts, cellphone calls and more. Was it impeachable? Probably. But it seems the Democrats don't go for the jugular like their bloodthirsty counterparts across the aisle. Let's not forget, there was an unfounded invasion of an innocent nation based on admittedly "sexed up" evidence of non-existent WMDs ... and the Democrats did nothing.

The Republicans, however, will grasp at anything -- birthers, deathers, Acorners ... they will throw everything at him, no matter how ridiculous, until something sticks. Now things are legitimately sticky.

Many of us would feel better about this mess if he were to be impeached over drone strikes, but from day one it did seem inevitable that the Neocons would get him somehow.

The Week.com adds this:

"President Obama went into damage-control mode on Monday, trying to dismiss GOP criticism of his administration's handling of September's deadly Benghazi attacks as a partisan "sideshow," while joining the angry chorus slamming the Internal Revenue Service for targeting conservative groups. Meanwhile, a third scandal erupted, when the Associated Press revealed that the Justice Department had secretly obtained some of its phone records."

Even if this "scandal" trifecta is overblown in the corporate media (don't even bother turning on Fox "News," they've had to tranquilize some of the talking heads to keep them from exploding), the optics, as they say, cannot be escaped. Obama denouncing the IRS targeting the Teabaggers while at the same time snooping into reporter's phone records. Oopsie.

Further, in the age of "Google Earth," face recognition technology, GPS, micro-chipping, and yes -- the weak justifications of the "War on Terror," is there any true privacy remaining anywhere for anybody?