The Justice Department has subpoenaed indymedia.us for its visitor logs for a certain date. While this raises big flags regarding online privacy, something else happened with this action that is very odd. The recipient of the subpoena was told she could not talk about it unless authorized by the Justice Department – an essential gag order.

Of course news like this would send the right into a full frenzy that Obama is trying to silence the media, even a left-leaning site like indymedia. Here’s Hot Air’s take on it:

Did the White House try to open up a two-front war on the media?   Before the Obama administration launched an all-out battle with conservative-leaning Fox News Channel, the Department of Justice demanded the records of all visitor information of left-leaning Indymedia.us in an remarkable subpoena of a media outlet, for one specific day.  No one can recall any precedent for such a wide-ranging probe into the records of a media website, but it may provide a challenge to a national-security law if the DoJ presses hard enough:

But there’s a problem with this “blame Obama” mentality. The original source of the article is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and this is what they say about the subpoena:

On January 30th, 2009, Kristina Clair of Philadelphia, PA — one of the system administrators of the server that hosts the indymedia.us site — received in the mail a grand jury subpoena from the Southern District of Indiana federal court. The FBI had sent an email to Ms. Clair a couple of weeks earlier asking where a subpoena directed at the indymedia.us site should be sent. So, we at EFF were ready and waiting to evaluate the subpoena as soon as it arrived. Yet even we were surprised at what we saw. A PDF of the entire subpoena is available here.

And let’s look at when the actual subpoena was signed:

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OK, looks like the pressure is finally getting to Glenn Beck. You can't watch this rant, from his show yesterday, without concluding that the big implosion is on its way.

Beck: Does sacred honor even exist in Washington anymore? Because I ratted out a self-avowed Communist in the administration in Van Jones, the same organizations, the same politicians, the same progressive media that are ignoring or standing for ACORN now, have called me Joseph McCarthy. They have such little regard for your intelligence that they don't think you're going to figure out that Joseph McCarthy was a powerful senator! Surrounded by the trappings of power of the United States government. With the power of subpoena and the power of Congress! The guy who stood against that was alone. While everybody else wet their pants and cowered in fear!

You'd think the members of the media might remember his name. It was Edward R. Murrow. And while I am nowhere near an Edward R. Murrow, never claimed to be, let me use the words of, finally, somebody that stood up to the power, and these senators, and said, Senator, have you no shame? Have you no shame?

Indeed, his critics have been making the all-too-accurate comparison to McCarthy, most notably Media Matters, who put together a handy side-by-side comparison that's devastating. Looks like Beck watched it and it made him cry.

Or maybe he saw the tallies from the latest set of advertisers to flee his sinking rat's nest of a show: over 50 percent of his ad dollars have now gone elsewhere. Bet that makes him cry too.

But really, Beck did make at least one accurate statement here: He's no Edward R. Murrow.

Hell, he's not even a Krusty the Klown.

Well! This certainly should be an interesting summer:

WASHINGTON – A House panel has subpoenaed documents that lawmakers say could shed new light on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's role in Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch.

The subpoena comes ahead of a hearing next week in which Bernanke is scheduled to testify.

Lawmakers have accused Bernanke and President Bush's treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, of pressuring Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis into the deal and urging him to keep quiet about Merrill's financial problems.

Not divulging that information would have violated Lewis' fiduciary duty to the bank's shareholders.

Lawmakers also have questioned whether Lewis threatened not to go through with the merger in order to squeeze money from the government.

  But he and Sarah have nothing to hide. I promise.

Yahoo!

The governor's husband, however, refuses to answer questions to a panel that he believes is politically motivated, according to campaign officials for Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Palin.

"The objections boil down to the fact that the legislative council investigation is no longer a legitimate investigation because it has been subjected to complete partisanship," campaign spokesman Ed O'Callaghan said.

Todd Palin could be found in contempt of the legislature for failing to comply, but the whole body would have to be in session to do so, and it is not scheduled to reconvene until January.

Josh makes a great point:

Who would you expect to announce that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin won't cooperate with the Alaska Legislature's probe into whether she abused the power of her office in Trooper-Gate?

Not Palin herself. Nor the spokesperson for the Governor's Office. Nor the lawyer the state is paying to represent her in her official capacity in the case. Instead, that announcement was made today by a spokesperson for John McCain's presidential campaign.

Just keep that in mind as this case unfolds.

(h/t Cernig)