When Even NPR Can't Ignore It Any Longer...

How many news organizations refused to cover the John Edwards love-baby story, even though more and more evidence gathered daily, until they were compelled by the sheer quantity of facts to start reporting?

How many news organizations refused to cover the "Bush national guard paperwork is fake" story, easily reproduced with the default settings in Microsoft Word, until there was no way to try to hide the truth anymore and they had to report on the fakery, thus costing Mary Mapes and Dan Rather their jobs?

Even NPR can't be struthious anymore about the danger to civil liberties caused by President Obama and his administration:

So Jonathan Turley, he's a law professor at George Washington University. His piece, "Obama: A Disaster for Civil Liberties," ran last month in the Los Angeles Times, and he joins us now in Studio 3A. So you say of President Obama that his election may be one of the single most devastating events in our history for civil liberties? That is very, very strong language, Jonathan.

JONATHAN TURLEY: It is a strong language, but I think civil libertarians are coming to grips with what is really a building disaster for our movement, and it's been a rather difficult process. You know, I have a large civil liberties blog, and there's a lot of soul-searching among civil libertarians about what exactly happened. But we are engaging in a sense of collective denial when we deal with President Obama.

DONVAN: You mean you're not talking about it publicly.

TURLEY: Yeah.

Remember, President Bush and his Republican-led Congress passed the Patriot Act with overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle; they also put a sunset provision in it. President Obama and his Democrat-led Congress reauthorized the Patriot Act, giving even more strength to many areas challenged by civil libertarians. And I don't think there's a sunset provision in the reauthorization, but I could be wrong.