During the Bush years Media Matters offered some of the most insightful and well-researched critiques of the executive branch produced. Now that a Democrat is in the White House the tune has changed and none more so than on executive branch abuses of power.

Today, Media Matters offered a dishonest apologetic masquerading as a condemnation of two reported incidents of the Obama Administration attacking journalists.

One of the assertions continually made by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at yesterday’s press briefing regarding the AP Spying scandal was that President Obama believed in “unfettered” investigative journalism. The evidence Carney offered for this assertion was Obama’s support for a shield law that died in 2010.

The film, Silenced, profiles Thomas Drake, former NSA employee who blew the whistle on NSA wiretapping.

We made this YouTube advertisement entitled “Aiding the Enemy” to raise awareness of the dangers posed to the American public by leveling this charge at Bradley Manning, and recruit people to our campaign urging Major General Michael Linnington to drop the charge immediately.

John Kiriakou, the former CIA agent who was the first to publicly acknowledge that torture was official US policy under the administration of President George W. Bush, has been sentenced to thirty months in jail. He was convicted in October of last year of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) when he provided the name of an officer involved in the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program to a reporter.

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on waterboarding and exposed how CIA torture was policy, was convicted of a classified leak for sharing the name of an officer involved in the rendition program with a reporter. He is set to be sentenced to jail for thirty months on Friday.

President Obama has opposed waterboarding as torture since the 2008 campaign – so why is he sending the man who helped shed light on that practice to prison?

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who helped expose the Bush administration’s torture program, recently plead guilty to sharing the name of a colleague to journalists to use as a source. He is expected to receive a sentence of 30 months in prison.

It’s a cruel irony that the first agent connected to the CIA torture program to go to prison is the whistleblower who spoke out against the heinous practices of our government.

Sign our petition demanding President Obama pardon CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou.

A military judge granted a government motion and ruled the defense could not argue motive during the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier being prosecuted by the military for releasing classified information to WikiLeaks.

The decision, which is not available to the press or public, found the defense would not be able to discuss whether Manning had “good faith” when presenting argument on charges that he “wrongfully and wantonly cause[d] to be published on the internet intelligence belonging to the United States government,” or for charges where the government only has to prove Manning had “reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

Days before John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer convicted of a classified leak, is scheduled to be sentenced to thirty months in jail, support for him is growing.

The slogan of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign was “Forward.” As progressives and others celebrate his victory, they need to take a moment to soberly reflect on the reality that his second term will be marked by advancing policies that he helped institutionalize or allowed to become further entrenched—some of which picked up on expanding executive power where President George W. Bush left off in 2008.