From Michael Isikoff at NBC News…

Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.

So there’s that.

We haven’t done a whole lot on the Obama administration’s attacks on the mainstream media, largely because those guys buy their ink by the barrel and they ought to be able to tell their own story and defend themselves. Not to mention – and Rosen doesn’t count where this is concerned, because he’s at Fox News and Fox news has been under attack since Obama took office – most of the mainstream media have deserved this kind of treatment since they’ve carried water for Obama even without the thug tactics of the administration.

But the fact that Holder, the Attorney General, was the guy who put his name to the blitheringly stupid idea of attempting to make Rosen out to be a criminal for committing journalism is pretty significant even if you see this scandal with a pretty jaundiced eye.

Rosen isn’t a Sean Hannity or Chris Matthews. He’s not a partisan reporter. He’s a damn good gatherer of facts and he’s well-respected as a national security correspondent. And for him to get this kind of treatment is…not surprising, because by now it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Obama administration would go to these lengths, but remarkable.

For it to go as high as Holder? Wow. Not that Holder isn’t a thug; we already know he is. But you’d figure somewhere along the line somebody would want to insulate the Boss from something so ugly as treating honest reporters like criminals.

Holder’s boss, by the way, was crowing about how wrong this all was and how he’ll get to the bottom of it in his speech today…

Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law. That is why I have called on Congress to pass a media shield law to guard against government over-reach. I have raised these issues with the Attorney General, who shares my concern. So he has agreed to review existing Department of Justice guidelines governing investigations that involve reporters, and will convene a group of media organizations to hear their concerns as part of that review. And I have directed the Attorney General to report back to me by July 12th.

Holder “shares my concern.”

No, it’s not amazing. We’ve seen it time and time again; the bald-faced lies, the delicious irony and the blatant hypocrisy.

And the complete lack of accountability.

Notice what Obama did today? Not “I’ll get to the bottom of this and pink slips go out to everybody involved.” Instead, it’s “Let’s pass a law so this never happens again.” Of course, we already know that this administration doesn’t follow the law. So what the “Let’s pass a law” business is for is “Now that I’ve gotten my shots in, we need to make sure that if the Republicans get somebody in the White House my people are protected from the same kind of abuse I’m heaping on them.”

And nobody gets fired. Prosecuted? Please.

Lois Lerner just got administrative leave today. A paid vacation for getting caught running an IRS pogrom of conservative activist organizations. And likely a sweetheart gig at the Center for American Progress or some other Soros front group for her trouble.

And nobody will get fired for the James Rosen case, either. The guess is not even Holder will get cashiered. He’s Inner Circle, and if they won’t get rid of any State Department bureaucrats who killed their own people in Benghazi Holder is certainly safe.

Still…it’s stuff like this which really should pull the scales away from the eyes of the rest of the mainstream media. Because what happened to Rosen also happened to the AP, and the AP isn’t Fox News.

Bill Whittle had a great Afterburner on this which came out earlier today on the question of what happens when the coastal-elite crowd starts to see bad things happen to “real people” and not just us rubes from flyover territory…

Will this flurry of tyranny change things? Experience says probably not. But Obama’s scandals are beginning to get coverage that they weren’t getting before. And the scandals will take down his political capital, little by little, ultimately leading to the perception of him as a weak, damaged, and eventually failed president.