Monday, September 22, 2008

Hiding in Plain Sight

Today's Washington Post editorial Hiding in Plain Sight calls out Palin for not giving a news conference in 23 days as VP candidate and McCain one in more than a month. I don't know when Obama's last one was.

I went to an ACLU panel last week about the media and politics, particularly the election. Callie Crossley said she spoke to a student recently and was shocked he told her that the President doesn't have to answer questions from the press. She said yes he did, they were the fourth estate.

Actually as far as I read the Constitution, he only has to give a State of the Union speech once a year. Yes there is freedom of the press in the First Amendment but the press doesn't appear in Article II. It seems Republicans have found this loophole, maybe we need an amendment mandating the president answer questions from the press and candidates too. But they'd probably get around it by just talking with Fox News. They call themselves press, so they must be right?

I thought I remember that Bush gave very few press conferences at first. It was a month before his first press conference but that doesn't seem so long now.

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