Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite
In January, it was reported that the network was choosing not to renew her contract.
“I’ve had several conversations with Governor Palin in the past few weeks about her rejoining Fox News as a contributor,” Mr. Ailes said Thursday. “I have great confidence in her and am pleased that she will once again add her commentary to our programming.”
Read more from this story HERE.
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Epstein insisted on playing politics with the issue, suggesting that the surveillance had no direct connections to White House: “If you want to conflate and combine the issues and make the general statements you can do that. I don’t think it’s a thoughtful way to approach it.”
Cavuto retorted: “Think about what I said. Julian, don’t play the politics thing. I’m telling you, drop the liberal thing and focus on the reality thing. You have one entity after another going after American people. You have one system of government, one agency, one department after another essentially doing the same thing. You can call that conflating. I am telling you there is a pattern.”
Epstein reiterated, “You can’t conflate all these issues, you have to speak about them differently. In the case of the IRS, I agree the targeting is wrong, but there was never any connection to the White House. Nobody has proven that.”
Right before cutting off his microphone, Cavuto responded, “I’m not going to get anywhere arguing this point You are saying nothing and it’s offensive. It’s annoying how obnoxious you can be on reality.”
By Jason Howerton. During last week’s hearing, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) asked Holder about the potential to prosecute reporters under the Espionage Act of 1917.
“You’ve got a long way to go to try to prosecute the press for publication of material,” Holder answered.
He later added: “In regard to potential prosecution of the press for disclosure of material, this is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, of would think would be wise policy.” Read more from this story HERE.
As we reported yesterday, however, Holder was personally involved in the approval of the warrant and investigation of Fox News reporter Rossen.
Photo Credit: New Yorker By Ryan Lizza. The Obama Administration fought to keep a search warrant for James Rosen’s private e-mail account secret, arguing to a federal judge that the government might need to monitor the account for a lengthy period of time.
The new details are revealed in a court filing detailing a back and forth between the Justice Department and the federal judges who oversaw the request to search a Gmail account belonging to Rosen, a reporter for Fox News. A 2009 article Rosen had written about North Korea sparked an investigation; Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department adviser who allegedly leaked classified information to Rosen, insisted that the reporter should not be notified of the search and seizure of his e-mails, even after a lengthy delay.
E-mails, Machen wrote, “are commonly used by subjects or targets of the criminal investigation at issue, and the e-mail evidence derived from those compelled disclosures frequently forms the core of the Government’s evidence supporting criminal charges.”
He argued that disclosure of the search warrant would preclude the government from monitoring the account, should such a step become necessary in the investigation. Machen added that “some investigations are continued for many years because, while the evidence is not yet sufficient to bring charges, it is sufficient to have identified criminal subjects and/or criminal activity serious enough to justify continuation of the investigation.”
Machen insisted the investigation would be compromised if Rosen was informed of the warrant, and also asked the court to order Google not to notify Rosen that the company had handed over Rosen’s e-mails to the government. Rosen, according to recent reports, did not learn that the government seized his e-mail records until it was reported in the Washington Post last week. Read more from this story HERE.
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US attorney, Obama ally takes heat for handling of leak probes
By Fox News. While Attorney General Eric Holder is taking heat for his department’s seizure of reporter records, the U.S. attorney who is personally overseeing those investigations is himself starting to face complaints that he’s gone too far in pursuing leaks.
Ronald Machen Jr., the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, was nominated by President Obama in 2009 and now runs the biggest federal prosecutor office in the country. His hundreds of attorneys handle everything from gang violence to corruption.
But in recent years, leak investigations have become a hallmark of his portfolio. And his dogged pursuit of the squeaky wheels in government has led him into the tenuous — and some say unprecedented — territory of lumping in leakers with journalists.
“What’s astonishing here is that never before has the government argued that newsgathering — in this case, asking a source to provide sensitive information — is itself illegal,” Gabe Rottman, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told FoxNews.com.
Machen was an early and frequent campaign donor to Obama during the 2008 election, giving close to the maximum amount allowed by law. He gave $2,300 in the general election and nearly as much during the primary. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Chip SomodevillaAttorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.
The disclosure of the attorney general’s role came as President Barack Obama, in a major speech on his counterterrorism policy, said Holder had agreed to review Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve journalists.
“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” Obama said. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.”
Rosen, who has not been charged in the case, was nonetheless the target of a search warrant that enabled Justice Department investigators to secretly seize his private emails after an FBI agent said he had “asked, solicited and encouraged … (a source) to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and intelligence information.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Newly uncovered court documents reveal the Justice Department seized records of several Fox News phone lines as part of a leak investigation — even listing a number that, according to one source, matches the home phone number of a reporter’s parents.
The seizure was ordered in addition to a court-approved search warrant for Fox News correspondent James Rosen’s personal emails. In the affidavit seeking that warrant, an FBI agent called Rosen a likely criminal “co-conspirator,” citing a wartime law called the Espionage Act.
Rosen was not charged, but his movements and conversations were tracked. A source close to the leak investigation confirmed to Fox News that the government obtained phone records for several numbers that match Fox News numbers out of the Washington bureau.
Further, the source confirmed to Fox News that one number listed matched the number for Rosen’s parents in Staten Island.
Rosen’s father, attorney Myron Rosen, told FoxNews.com he found the records seizure to be “downright ludicrous.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Mediaite‘Co-Conspirator’: Fox News Reporter James Rosen’s Private Emails Given To Justice Dept. By Google
By Noah Rothman. As a result of Fox News Channel’s State Department reporter James Rosen’s 2009 investigation into the government’s response to North Korea’s repeated provocations, it was reported on Monday that the Department of Justice tracked Rosen’s movements as well as subpoenaed telephone and email records. According to the DoJ’s subpoena, Google surrendered Rosen’s emails, who is described as “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator,” to the government. Read more from this story HERE.
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Washington Times Writer: Fox news Scandal Goes ‘Much Deeper,’ W.H. Sitting on Something Top Obama Aides ‘Terrified’ about.
By Jason Howerton. Washington Times columnist Joseph Curl on Monday said the Obama administration’s developing scandal involving the monitoring of Fox News reporter James Rosen’s email accounts goes “much deeper.” Read more from this story HERE.
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Judge Napolitano: Naming Fox’s Rosen a Possible Criminal Is ‘Chilling’
By Greg Richter. The naming of a journalist as a possible co-conspirator in a criminal case of leaked classified information is “chilling,” Judge Andrew Napolitano says.
“The Supreme Court has ruled that when the government makes it difficult for you to do your job as a journalist by scaring off your sources or watching your every move, that’s called ‘chilling.'” Napolitano said Monday on Fox News Channel. “Chilling is a constitutional phrase meaning the government hasn’t directly silenced me, but it’s made it more difficult for me to speak.”
Fox News correspondent James Rosen was named a possible co-conspirator in a Justice Department affidavit, it was learned Monday. His personal emails were searched as part of the investigation.
Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge and analyst for Fox News Channel, said it was not a crime for a journalist to ask for, receive, or publish classified information. Nothing in the affadavit claims Rosen did anything more than what journalists are legally allowed to do as part of their jobs, he said. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox NewsAlthough he anchors the top-rated cable newscast in the nation, Shepard Smith of the Fox News Channel ranks last in a brand-new Reader’s Digest Poll listing the top 100 most trusted Americans.
“The results are revealing, hopeful, and sometimes shocking,” says the Reader’s Digest, which teamed up with the research firm Wagner Group to survey more than 1,000 Americans and discover which individuals and the ideals they represent have earned public confidence.
Smith, anchor of “The Fox Report,” was ranked at No. 100, just below New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman, who are at Nos. 98 and 99 respectively. But since no other Fox journalist even made the top 100, Smith’s ranking could be viewed as good news for him.
The magazine provides a slideshow of photos and quotes for each person in its ranking.
The quote attributed to Smith is, “I’m a journalist; I run to the fire, that’s what we do.”
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Life NewsFox News will air a one-hour special on abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell and his murder charges Sunday May 5 at 9 p.m. ET. The cable news channel has now unveiled the name of the program, which will be called “See No Evil – The Kermit Gosnell Murders.”
Father Frank Pavone, the director of Priests for Life, announced the special to LifeNews in an email this morning and encouraged pro-life advocates to tune in and to let others know about it.
“Please spread the word starting now,” he said. “Let’s do all we can to spread the word about this so as to get as many people as possible to watch, and to show our friends in the secular media that when this topic is addressed, people tune in.”
Father Pavone says it is up to the pro-life movement to expose Gosnell to the nation, with the mainstream media largely punting coverage of his trial.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Fox NewsOne of the most famous liberal voices in America is now suggesting the U.S. cut off Muslim students from coming to America, as well as deporting some of those already here and even sending them to prison.
Bob Beckel, the former campaign director for Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale and current co-host of “The Five” on the Fox News Channel, made the bold statement on his show Monday while discussing the Boston bombing suspects, who are Muslim.
“We know that, bottom line, in the Muslim communities around the world, they do not like us. They recruit people from poor areas and turn them into terrorists,” Beckel explained. “It’s not hard to recruit, though, because the hatred for the United States runs deep.”
“I think we really have to consider, that given the fact that so many people hate us, that we’re gonna have to cut off Muslim students from coming to this country for some period of time so that we can at least absorb what we’ve got, look at what we’ve got and decide whether some of the people here should be sent back home or sent to prison,” he continued.
Watch video here:
Read more from this story HERE.