In yet another Orwellian advance at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, the headline at today's AP "exclusive" report on President Obama's unilateral imposition of new orders relating to guns is: "OBAMA OFFERS NEW GUN CONTROL STEPS."
Reporter Josh Lederman is in on it too. He never specficially describes Obama's current actions as "orders." Alternate words include "announced," "proposing," "executive actions," and "new policy." It isn't until the second-last of his 13 paragraphs that Lederman informs readers that "the White House has completed or made significant progress on all but one of the 23 executive actions Obama had previously ordered in January" (but the actions themselves are not called "orders".
He casually slips in the administration's intent to "require insurers to cover mental health at parity with medical benefits," something Congress has specifically rejected several times in the past, partially because it could present a costly open-ended opportunity for the therapy community to milk the system by keeping patients in treatment interminably.
Here are several paragraphs from Lederman's propaganda announcement (bolds are mine):
Striving to take action where Congress would not, the Obama administration announced new steps Thursday on gun control, curbing the import of military surplus weapons and proposing to close a little-known loophole that lets felons and others circumvent background checks by registering guns to corporations.
Four months after a gun control drive collapsed spectacularly in the Senate, President Barack Obama added two more executive actions to a list of 23 steps the White House determined Obama could take on his own to reduce gun violence. With the political world focused on Mideast tensions and looming fiscal battles, the move signaled Obama's intent to show he hasn't lost sight of a cause he took up after 20 first graders and six adults were gunned down last year in an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
Actually, Josh, it can be argued that Obama is issuing these orders because almost everyone's attention is focused elsewhere.
Continuing:
One new policy will end a government practice that lets military weapons, sold or donated by the U.S. to allies, be reimported into the U.S. by private entities, where some may end up on the streets. The White House said the U.S. has approved 250,000 of those guns to be reimported since 2005; under the new policy, only museums and a few other entities like the government will be eligible to reimport military-grade firearms.
The Obama administration is also proposing a federal rule to stop those who would be ineligible to pass a background check from skirting the law by registering a gun to a corporation or trust. The new rule would require people associated with those entities, like beneficiaries and trustees, to undergo the same type of fingerprint-based background checks as individuals if they want to register guns.
(Paragraph 12 of 13)
... the White House has completed or made significant progress on all but one of the 23 executive actions Obama had previously ordered in January, the White House said. Still lingering is an effort to finalize regulations to require insurers to cover mental health at parity with medical benefits, although the White House said that it is committed to making that happen by the end of 2013.
Commenters at Lederman's article indicate that military surplus items are usually bought by collectors and rarely "end up on the streets."
At AP, it's "Mission Accomplished." Readers who only look at the AP's headline won't have any idea that Obama is taking unilateral action. But he is. Those who read the content will have to work very hard to get there, if they get there at all.
Winston Smith, post-torture, would be so proud.
This is from the same crowd which spent years lying about Bush 43's alleged "unilateral" foreign-policy actions.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
