My New York Post column today concerns the administration’s war on the media, which should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following the gang from Chitown from its first appearance on the national scene. But now Chicago’s chickens . . . comin’ home to roost:

The Justice Department’s secret seizure of phone records from The Associated Press and its monitoring of Fox News reporter James Rosen are nothing less than thuggish attempts to criminalize the practice of journalism — the only profession specifically protected by the US Constitution.
Free and open inquiry is also the cornerstone of our democracy, a legacy of the Enlightenment that found its clearest expression in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
By which the Founders specifically meant political speech.
They understood that, even with the checks and balances built into the Constitution, there was still a need for an unfettered press to keep an eye on “public servants” with access to both state treasure and power. And that an absolute guarantee of freedom of inquiry was vital.
“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech,” wrote “Cato” (British essayists Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard) in a 1720 essay that greatly influenced the Framers. “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of the nation, must begin by subduing the freedom of speech.”

I’m a big fan of Trenchard and Gordon, and especially of this essay, whose echoes of emanations of penumbras inform our First Amendment. Especially this passage:

To assert, that King James was a papist and a tyrant, was only so far hurtful to him, as it was true of him; and if the Earl of Strafford had not deserved to be impeached, he need not have feared a bill of attainder. If our directors and their confederates be not such knaves as the world thinks them, let them prove to all the world, that the world thinks wrong, and that they are guilty of none of those villainies which all the world lays to their charge.

In other words: In a functioning free society the burden of proof is on the rulers to demonstrate their innocence. It is the precise opposite of the bill of goods the legal profession — which in many ways is synonymous with the political profession — has been peddling for years: that they are innocent until proven guilty. But such codswallop is endemic in leftist cant: Phrases such as “you can’t prove it” and “there’s no evidence” droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven from their lips, when they’re not taking the Fifth. Their touching faith in the institutions of justice needs to be seen for what it is – a self-protective mechanism to keep the swag coming as long as possible, unto the day they’re finally dragged off to jail or escape out the back door. An independent press is supposed to be the check on this; that’s the role assigned to it by the Founders. But even they could not foresee the day when the media would merrily join in the ring of organized crime itself.

But hey — being Jake Lingle means getting to play both sides of the street! And speaking of Jake Lingle:

Since Campaign ’08, most of the media has been in the tank for Obama, seeing in him the culmination of half a century of liberal social progress.
Like them, Obama is a product of elite schools and shares their values. In a world in which reporters and political operatives live and work in the same neighborhoods, vacation together and routinely intermarry, the president is viewed as “one of us.” Where once they reveled in their status as outsiders, today’s media elite are now drawn from the same social class as the people they cover.
With David Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune journalist turned campaign guru, pulling their strings, the media has been loath to do or say anything against their hero, preferring to applaud the Hope, rather than investigate the Change.
It never seems to have occurred to them that they might become targets themselves.

Yet here we are, with Fox News and the AP under the gun of the gun-runners at the Department of Justice, who know a thing or two about guns.

Following the tactics outlined by socialist radical Saul Alinsky, the father of “community organizing,” the Obama governing ethos is one of slander, intimidation and — as the burgeoning IRS scandal so vividly illustrates — occasional blunt force to keep its “enemies” demoralized and incapacitated in its pursuit of “fundamental transformation.”
Whether there are still enough self-respecting mainstream reporters and editors willing to fight back, though, is another question.

I guess we’ll find out.