-By Warner Todd Huston
By all accounts the Interstate 5 bridge collapse in Washington State was a result of an over sized truck load as opposed to “failing infrastructure.” But a plea for greater federal spending figured prominently in many reports on the accident nonetheless.
Naturally, many on the left stampeded immediately to decrying “austerity,” or accused the Republicans of “endangering lives” by opposing big government, while still others blamed the sequester as news of the collapse spread.
In the progressive media, infrastructure also featured prominently in coverage.
CNN, for instance, injected Obama’s call for higher spending in its piece. USA Today also claimed that the bridge collapse would “raise questions about the nation’s infrastructure.” Reuters focused on a call for “public officials to invest in infrastructure and upgrade bridges.” The Associated Press joined Reuters in that focus. And, not to be outdone, Bloomberg said, “The bridge’s collapse put a new focus on the nation’s failing infrastructure, an issue that President Barack Obama has highlighted in his second-term agenda.”
Sadly, the Voice of America also used the collapse as a means to talk about Obama’s spending wants.
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Washington Bridge Collapse Being Used to Push Big Government”
In 2007 when Barack Obama was running for President the first time there was a controversy raging over whether U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez was right to accede to President Bush’s order to fire a handful of U.S. attorneys. Obama then criticized the AG for politicizing the office. Flash forward to 2013 and he’s now standing up for an AG that is far worse than what he claimed Gonzalez ever was.
The intrepid Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has been one of the few reporters attempting to dig deep into controversial stories–and by controversial we mean stories that Obama would rather see go away. But after her work on Fast & Furious and Benghazi, she is now reporting that she’s been shut out of the information loop by the White House.
A new poll conducted jointly by The Washington Post and ABC News revealed some interesting trends. Among other findings, more Americans feel that Obama and his administration are lying about Benghazi, a majority feel that the IRS acted inappropriately by targeting conservative groups, and the media is still distrusted with a majority feeling that the Justice Department’s seizure of the AP’s phone records was justified. Despite all this disapproval, Obama’s approval rating is still just over 50 percent positive.
The Conservative Hispanic Society has joined the growing list of conservative groups that feel that they, too, were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service in its recent campaign of harassment. In a statement, CHS is “expressing outrage” over what it feels is Obama’s “infiltration of every aspect of our government.”
Earlier today it was reported that several Fox News reporters were targeted by the Department of Justice over interaction with an employee(s) at the State Department. In the investigation, Fox News’ James Rosen was fingered by the DOJ not as just a reporter getting “classified” information, but an “aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator.” This is such a shocking charge that even The New Yorker has come to Rosen’s support.
Apparently a cadre of far left-wing “journalists” were seen filing into the White House for a secretive meeting with their lord and master Barack “I Didn’t Know” Obama.
Bill Press is a liberal radio show host with a syndicated show heard across the country, so, naturally, Press is also an Obama supporter. But even this Obama supporter thinks that it is time for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to be fired.
On the May 19 broadcast of CNN’s State of the Union, host Candy Crowley said that Obama was late in identifying the attacks in Benghazi as terrorism quite contrary to what she said during the Presidential debates late last year.
Politico has declared embattled Attorney General Eric Holder untouchable after the many scandals, lapses, overreaches, and contempt charges have failed to induce the President to fire him.
On May 14 after news broke that President Obama had once again attacked talk radio host Rush Limbaugh by name, El Rusbo joked that he was “living rent-free in Obama’s head.” It’s hard to fault Limbaugh’s logic on this. After all, the President of the United States of America has used his bully pulpit to bully Rush nearly a dozen times since he became President.
The journalist group Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has penned a letter of complaint to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder after revelations that the Dept. of Justice obtained the phone records of some 100 reporters from the Associated Press.
Former Bush operative John Yoo has said that President Obama is now reaping the whirlwind of a “leak-happy world” that he and his colleagues created to destroy George W. Bush’s administration and is ruefully amused that they are finding the whole thing suddenly distasteful.
It has been 8 months since the terrorist attacks on our facilities in Benghazi, Libya, attacks that ended up killing four Americans including our ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. Still we haven’t had a concrete explanation about this incident and new State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki didn’t do anything to alleviate that state of affairs as reporters peppered her with uncomfortable questions in her May 13 press briefing.
The story of the coming demise of Chinatown bus lines in New York City is a tale of multiple failures in both government and the media and shows that both have a bias against entrepreneurs that kills new, start up ideas with unfair regulations, faux public advocacy, and dismal reporting.
In the newest overreach perpetrated by the Obama administration, the Associated Press has discovered that some 100 of its Washington-based reporters have had their phone records–both personal and business–secretly obtained by Eric Holder’s Justice Department. 
Upon coming to office, President Obama began using the obscure National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to give big payoffs to unions at the expense of business and to the detriment of our economic recovery but at last his incredible abuse of this agency is under scrutiny.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, many conservatives complained that the IRS was targeting them for harassment, some even claimed that Obama had an “enemies list.” During that time the progressive media complex ridiculed these claims but now the IRS itself has come forward to “
On May 10, a spokeswoman for the Internal Revenue Service admitted that over the last year–during the presidential election, at that–the agency had conducted “overzealous audits” of the tax-exempt status of dozens of conservative activists and Tea Party groups. Last year The New York Times dismissed claims that the IRS was abusing its powers but even with these new admissions by the IRS the Times is underplaying the facts.
According to Lisa Myers of NBC news, Democrats are starting to get worried about the testimony delivered by the Benghazi whistleblowers on Wednesday. Myers says she has been the recipient of phone calls by Democrats who are trying to undermine that testimony.
The Associated Press on Wednesday mischaracterized the Benghazi hearings as merely a Republican event even though it is an official House investigation.