The Supreme Soviet Comes to Washington DC

Leonard Downey, Jr, in the Washington Post:

Sanger, who has worked for the (New York) Times in Washington for two decades, said, “This is most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered.”...

“Reporters are interviewing sources through intermediaries now,” (Washington Post national news editor Cameron) Barr told me, “so the sources can truthfully answer on polygraphs that they didn’t talk to reporters.”...

“People think they’re looking at reporters’ records,” Post national security reporter Dana Priest told me. “I’m writing fewer things in e-mail. I’m even afraid to tell officials what I want to talk about because it’s all going into one giant computer.”

It does start to sound a bit Soviet, but then Obama's family, childhood, and early adult connections were rather sympathetic toward the Stalinist point of view.

Will Obama recognize that all this threatens his often-stated but unfulfilled goal of making government more transparent and accountable? None of the Washington news media veterans I talked to were optimistic.

I think it is no threat at all because the "oft-stated goal" isn't a goal. It never was. The whole mindset is Control Freak. Control people's health insurance if they can't -yet- control their health care directly. Control the people's ability to resist via IRS abuses. Control the people's ability to resist by banning entire categories of firearms. Punish political speech with IRS field audits. Punish contributions to Republicans with federal swat team raids on guitar manufacturers.

I think openness was never a goal. It was only a lie.

It always was.