The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The election of the President of the United States lumbers onward past the 40 day mark to election day with seeds of the future demise of this great concept, America, being progressively planted and nurtured.   The nurturing force? Money. Gobs and reams of it. Hundreds of millions of it. Two candidates face each other in a titanic battle of never ending spending to attempt to control the message, not the truth of American politics.  And what was once the arbiter of separating fact from truth, the so-called fourth estate, the press, has becoming a willing participant in picking sides and fashioning the message Americans will use to make their decision.  Freedom of the Press, specifically mentioned in the initial article of the Bill of Rights, secured to assure the capacity of the people to control their government and protect its excesses, has now become a vehicle for the government to squash the redressing of grievances, and the correcting of electoral mistakes.

The collusion of the press and the abandonment of their first amendment role has been made ever so clear in a two week period of scandalous government performance and purposeful neglect of that performance by the media.  The story so carefully tendered of a brilliant, competent President performing his difficult tasks with dexterity and foresight has proven to be Potemkin facade glaringly exposed in the debacle in Libya of an assassinated ambassador and the pathetic administration performance in the aftermath.  It would be a story on the level of the failed Carter rescue mission of 1979, the Bay of Pigs catastrophe and aftermath of 1961,or even the infamous George Bush ‘flyover’ of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 if a free, investigative press was still functioning – but only silence and more silence.  The main stream media has bought into this President and allowed him to buy into them.   With this incestuous relationship, the primary freedoms declared in the nation’s founding act are crumbling, an with it the relationship of its government to its people.

In the past two weeks, an American administration frankly lied for days after about what it knew regarding a  devastating failure of foreign policy.  An American ambassador to Libya and three other American citizens were murdered in a calculated, planned military style operation of the sworn enemy of the United States, Al Qaeda.  The inability to predict and secure against such a revenge operation in one of the world’s most volatile places on the anniversary of 9/11 borders on stupidity,  but the administration’s response and cover-up of events borders on criminal.  Within hours of the attack the Libyan President himself stated on American television that this was no spontaneous outburst of  anger towards an unseen video but a coordinated  attack of enemies of the state.  The government of the United States was clearly aware of the realities on the ground.  The response, a cover story – agitated Libyan citizens grew out of control protesting a video they had never seen,  and had in their anger at our insensitivity to their culture, murdered Americans.  The nonsensical story was stuck to, with the President allowing the Ambassador to the UN to go on five Sunday morning news shows and proclaim no evidence of an organized terrorist attack, but conclusively claim the bogus video incitement as the cause of the catastrophe.   The “director” of the said video is rounded up by police after the event to intimidate American expressions of free speech and apologies for the essential American right of free expression guaranteed in the First Amendment are slathered over Arab media.  The press response to such willful cover-up of failed policies? Silence.

The President, the admitted designer of the “lead from behind” foreign policy tenets that led to the complete lack of coherent response to islamic extremist takeovers of the Arab Spring  revolts, the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt, the chaos in Libya, the genocide in Syria, the flagrant rebuff of the Green Revolution in Iran – continued the charade of cover-up in action after action.  The press response? Silence.  The President during the height of the explosion in the middle East against multiple embassies manages the crisis from an Obama fundraiser in Nevada.  The President interviewed on national television describes the deaths of U.S. representatives by a resurgent Al Qaeda as mere “bumps in the road” to his overall Arab Spring policies (see above cartoon),  The president days after acknowledgement of the obvious falsehood of his attempted scenario for the Libyan massacre goes before the United Nations and declares again the role of an unseen video and American cultural ignorance in propagating Arab responses.  He purposefully states he is too busy and refuses to meet with the leader of his only ally in the Middle East, Israel at one of the most unstable, dangerous times in recent history in which the words “world war” are being evoked by both sides, and instead appears on the fawning morning television show the View to present himself as “eye candy”.  On and On and On.  The press response to such blatant casualness about the primary threat to American sovereignty over the past twenty years? Silence.

The Silence is more than a national embarrassment, more than a potential negative to be explored on the way to the President’s attempt at re-election.  Its a threat to our way of life to have elected leaders so unaccountable to explain and be responsible for their actions.  Its a threat to the principles of America, the securing of an open government, the right to dissent, the press’s independent role to investigate,  the need to vet our candidates to represent us and who we are.  40 days before the election of the next American President, we are in the midst of a calamity with the current one, and the press acts like its role is to make sure no one finds out.

The former Democrat pollster Pat Caddell believes the foundations of America are being corrupted beyond repair by the joining of a willful dictacrat in the White House and a lap dog media.  Though he is a liberal, he makes it very clear he is not an idiot and can see the trappings of the loss of American freedom written all over this unholy marriage.  Democrat or Republican, collectivist or free thinker, no American can look at whats happening and not demand a “coming to Jesus” moment of the 2012 electorate.