Remember, President Obama has assured us that we are not a banana republic. If he's right, then Federal agents would never
raid a reporter's house to swipe embarrassing information:
Maryland state police
and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal
investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning
former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had
exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department's Federal Air Marshal Service.
Reporter Audrey Hudson said the investigators, who included an agent for Homeland's Coast Guard
service, took her private notes and government documents that she had
obtained under the Freedom of Information Act during a predawn raid of
her family home on Aug. 6.
The documents, some which chronicled her sources and her work at the Times about problems inside the Homeland Security Department, were seized under a warrant to search for unregistered firearms and a “potato gun” suspected of belonging to her husband, Paul Flanagan, a Coast Guard employee. Mr. Flanagan has not been charged with any wrongdoing since the raid.
