Let’s review a few items of interests re: the W. Bush Administration:

1. Paying Armstrong Williams, Michael McManus, and Maggie Gallagher and others for favorable opinions about WH policies or to attack opponents of the WH.
2. Planting Jeff Gannon to lob softball questions.
3. Used reporters to out a CIA agent, then sat by and watched reporters go to jail to protect their sources.
4. Fed reporters misinformation about WMD (with malice aforethought, mind you) on Iraq, then used those reporters stories as corroborating evidence of the existence of WMD in Iraq.
5. Waged a coordinated campaign against NBC.
6. The Pentagon Pundit program, which sold the war by planting former military officers on networks.
7. Staged mock press conferences with FEMA employees pretending to be reporters.
8. Told America and, specifically, journalists to “watch what they say and what they do.”

But, indeed, Obama’s administration calling out FoxNEWS as a glorified communications wing for the GOP is a yet another example of the President’s outlandish, Nixonian lawlessness. Truly unprecedented.

Call me when FoxNEWS turns over three hours of their vaunted “news time” in the mornings to a former Democratic representative. Likewise when msnbc hires anyone who is remotely like Glenn Beck for their “editorial” hours (which are loosely 7-10pm EST for both FoxNEWS and msnbc).

(Top 8 topics largely via Balloon Juice; links a free value-add for you, the Lemkin reader)