The War on Journalism continues. ABC News is reporting that the Federal Government is using using electronic surveillance to root out those who provide journalists with information about the government. For the first, oh, let’s say 214 years since the Constitution was adopted, Americans understood that journalists need sources in order to report anything worth reading. Of course, considering current events, the government has a vested interest in the people not reading anything, and they’re counting on the perennial apathy of the American people as they continue their assault on the First Amendment.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

“It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

…

Our reports on the CIA’s secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials.

People questioned by the FBI about leaks of intelligence information say the CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan.

Just an aside, but has anyone else noticed how emotion has been interwoven into the fabric of government and media in the past 6 years? When Senators are tasked with confirming a Presidential employee, we hear more about their families, their pets, and their favorite colors than we do about their administrative or judicial philosophies. When an appointee faces tough questioning, we hear more about how it made his victimized wife cry (possibly on cue) than about his non-answers. We have an “Office of Homeland Security,” rather than an “Office of Domestic Security.” The CIA isn’t “determined to end leaks,” it’s “upset” or “disturbed.” Something is very wrong when both government and Media begin using terminology that appeals more to the emotional centers of the brain rather than the logic centers. Anyway…

Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.

It seems none of us paid attention in second grade when they taught us about the three branches of government. Apparently it’s the executive branch, not the judicial or legislative, that gets to decide what is and isn’t legal.