BULLSHIT! King Hussein claims he is crushing the First Amendment to protect our troops. What a great guy! Isn’t it ironic that our troops are protecting our First Amendment? ~ Thomas Madison
From Neil Munro, Daily Caller
President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defense forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12.
“The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing.
The unprecedented reversal of Americans’ civil-military relations, and of the president’s duty to protect the First Amendment, was pushed by Earnest as he tried to excuse the administration’s opposition in 2012 to the publication of anti-jihadi cartoons by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
The White House voiced its objections in 2012 after the magazine’s office were burned by jihadis, followings its publication of anti-jihadi cartoons.
Earnest’s defense of those 2012 objections came just five days after the magazine’s office was attacked by additional jihadis. Eight journalists, two policeman and a visitor were murdered by two French-born Muslims who objected to the magazine’s criticism of Islam’s final prophet.
In 2012, “there was a genuine concern that the publication of some of those materials could put Americans abroad at risk, including American soldiers at risk,” Earnest said.
“That is something that the commander in chief takes very seriously,” he added, before saying that “the president and his spokesman was not then and will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform.”
In December, Congress approved and the president signed a $585 billion defense budget to train and equip soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen to defend Americans — including journalists — from foreign threats. The nation’s media industry does not have a defense budget to protect soldiers.
Earnest tried to rationalize the president’s opposition to the publication of anti-jihadist materials as a moral duty.
Whenever journalists consider publishing materials disliked by jihadis, “I think there are a couple of absolutes,” he told the reporters.
The first is “that the publication of any kind of material in no way justifies any act of violence, let alone an act of violence that we saw on the scale in Paris,” he said.
The second absolute is the president’s duty to lobby editors and reporters against publishing anti-jihadi information, he said. ”And there is — this president, as the commander in chief, believes strongly in the responsibility that he has to advocate for our men and women in uniform, particularly if it’s going to make them safer,” Earnest said.