Sipsey Street Irregulars: New Obama administration Nixonian policy: Keep politically unreliable reporters in a closet until they see only what you want them to see.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

New Obama administration Nixonian policy: Keep politically unreliable reporters in a closet until they see only what you want them to see.

*** REPORTER CONFINED IN CLOSET DURING VEEP'S FUNDRAISER ***

Sat March 26 2011 17:04:37 EDT

Staffers with Vice President Joe Biden confined an Orlando Sentinel reporter in a closet this week to keep him from mingling with high-powered guests gathered for a Democratic fundraiser.

Reporter Scott Powers was the designated "pool reporter" for the vice president's Wednesday visit to the massive Winter Park, Fla., home of developer and philanthropist Alan Ginsburg. The veep hadn't arrived yet but most of the 150 guests (minimum $500 donation) had. They were busy noshing on caprese crostini with oven-dried mozzarella and basil, rosemary flatbread with grapes honey and gorgonzola cheese and bacon deviled eggs, before a lunch of grilled chicken Caesar and garden vegetable wraps.

Not so for Powers. A "low-level staffer" put Powers in a storage closet and then stood guard outside the door, Powers told the DRUDGE REPORT. "When I'd stick my head out, they'd say, 'Not yet. We'll let you know when you can come out.'"

And no crustini for Powers, either. He made do with a bottle of water to sip as he sat at a tiny makeshift desk, right next to a bag marked "consignment." Powers was closeted at about 11:30 a.m., held for about an hour and 15 minutes, came out for 35 minutes of remarks by Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, and then returned to his jail for the remainder of the event.

Powers' phone didn't work in the closet, but his Blackberry did, so he fired a picture of his impromptu prison to his editors, who posted a short blog item on the lack of freedom of the press under the veep's control.

Powers didn't mention his confinement in either of his pool reports that day, saying only that "press coverage was limited to a single pool reporter, filing on behalf of all local media, who was allowed to listen to the remarks but not given an opportunity to talk with anyone at the event."

On Friday, Powers said, the home's owner called him. "He said he had no idea they'd put me in a closet and was very sorry. He said he was just following their lead and was extremely embarrassed by the whole thing."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...: That guy deserved to be in there! Low level staffer put him there? They're ALL low level SCUM! And that reporter,what a pussy! Screw em all!!!

CIII; March 27, 2011 at 8:11 AM
Anonymous said...: The real question is: What was VP Joe hiding from the reporter?; March 27, 2011 at 10:33 AM
Anonymous said...: I would have slugged the guy for trying to keep me in a closet. Isn't that called kidnapping? or illegal inprisonment?; March 27, 2011 at 11:55 AM
W W Woodward said...: Freedom of the press be damned. False imprisonment? What's that? Constitution? 1st Amendment? 14th Amendment? Huh?

I'm not surprised at all. Arrogance has no limits.

VP Joe and his people are agents of the federal government. Maybe the SCOTUS will at some point find it necessary to incorporate the entire Constitution as these Sons of Bitches don't seem to think it applies to them anymore.

[W3]; March 27, 2011 at 4:01 PM
CowboyDan said...: Yeah, somebody needs to go to jail for this sort of shinola.

It's like dealing with any other bullies; if you let them get away with it once, they think it's okay and they'll keep on doing it, or worse.

The guys who put the reporter in the closet are not likely to go to jail for it, but they need to have some anxious moments.

That Orlando Slantinel(that's what we called it when we lived there) reporter will never be allowed anywhere NEAR the big guys again, anyway, so he might as well try to make sure his brothers in ink are better treated in days to come.; March 27, 2011 at 9:24 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Sunday, March 27, 2011

New Obama administration Nixonian policy: Keep politically unreliable reporters in a closet until they see only what you want them to see.

5 comments:

Blog Archive

Followers