'Totalitarian temptation' seen in persecution of reporters, former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich -- By Mark Tapscott, The Washington Examiner

New York Times reporter James Risen — not to be confused with Fox News reporter James Rosen — is determined to protect the identity of a source.

Risen and the Times have taken the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will deliver a verdict later this year.

Risen refuses to testify in court in the government's prosecution of a former CIA official suspected of leaking classified information to him.

Risen refuses because he doesn't want to be asked under oath who was his source. He says he will go to jail if that is what it takes to protect his source. President Obama's Department of Justice is equally determined to force Risen to cough up the name.

From "most transparent" to "most dangerous"

Speaking recently on a panel in a conference on "Sources and Secrets" in New York, Risen said the Obama administration is “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.”

The administration wants to “narrow the field of national security reporting,” Risen said, to “create a path for accepted reporting.” Any journalist who exceeds those parameters, Risen said, “will be punished,” according to Poynter.org's Andrew Beaujon.

And don't forget that it was New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson who earlier this year called the Obama years "the most secretive administration" since Ronald Reagan was in the Oval Office.

PC Thought Police

Then there's the sad case of now-former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich who resigned after it became known he contributed to the traditional marriage side of California's Proposition 8 campaign in 2008.
Eich's public lynching by opponents of Proposition 8 drew this observation from HBO Real Time host Bill Maher: "I think there is a gay mafia. I think if you cross them, you do get whacked."

Fifty-two percent of Eich's fellow Californians agreed with him on Proposition 8. It can be unsettling to wonder how many in the opposite camp, if suddenly given the power, would today visit retribution on every one of those voters if given the opportunity.

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