By the right’s newfound concern for reporters’ lives:

“Whatever” seems to be President No Strategy’s standard operating procedure. What now, Obama? As Twitchy reported, horrifying news is coming out Tuesday afternoon. It is being reported that another journalist, Steven Sotloff, has been beheaded by the barbaric savages known as ISIS.

Let’s not forget this.

Note that even after her release, Carroll maintained that she had been treated well by her captors—so it would appear that this journalist for the Christian Science Monitor made these anti-American comments voluntarily.

Or this.

One member of the Pulitzer-winning AP team was AP stringer Bilal Hussein. Hussein’s photos have raised serious, persistent questions about his relationship with terrorists in Iraq and whether his photos were/are staged in collusion with the enemy.

Or this.

It’s official: Treason is cool and traitors are acceptable sources for journalists. The Pulitzer Prize says so.

Or this.

Every time a journalist dies in horrid agony, the Baby Jesus smiles and shakes his rattle.

Let’s not forget Ann Coulter saying the only problem she had with Timothy McVeigh was that he didn’t drive to the New York Times building.

Let’s not forget Rope. Tree. Journalist.

When a group becomes so dangerous to America as “news” sources, like the Associated Press is, it becomes time to seriously consider the idea that EXTREME FUCKING MEASURES need to be taken.

Let’s not forget Rush Limbaugh mocking reporters detained in the Middle East: 

“It is being breathlessly reported that the Egyptian army . . . is rounding up foreign journalists. I mean even two New York Times reporters were detained. Now this is supposed to make us feel what exactly? . . . Are we supposed to feel outrage – I don’t feel any outrage over it. Are we supposed to feel anger – I don’t feel any anger over this. Do we feel happy? Well – do we feel kinda going like [taunting sound]“

Let’s not forget the last 25 years of attacking the press for anything reported that contradicted their point of view on abortion, war and the second amendment. And then let’s not forget the decade during which the journalists under attack by these freaks sucked up to them and pretended they weren’t serious about having reporters killed: 

When I spoke with her friend Miguel Estrada, an attorney and onetime White House nominee for a judgeship (Estrada asked President Bush to withdraw his name in 2003 after a Democratic filibuster targeted Estrada’s conservatism), he said Coulter’s appeal 15 years ago, when they met, was “the same as it is today. She was lively and funny and engaging and boisterous and outrageous and a little bit of a polemicist … Most of the time, people miss her humor and satire and take her way too literally.”

I began to wonder, in a moistly liberal formulation, whether Ann Coulter might be … misunderstood?

They are not interested in reporters’ lives. They never have been and they never will be. If this wasn’t an opportunity to attack Obama, if this wasn’t a chance to argue for more freedom bombs and more endless war, if this wasn’t their shot to once more be relevant to the public conversation in the eyes of the Stockholmed media executives who are seeing their profits vanish before them, they wouldn’t be saying dick.

This is a way to score points. That’s all this is. They do not love press freedom or the idea of an independent and courageous Fourth Estate.

If this was happening under a Republican president, they’d be making pious noises about the inevitable costs of war and the sacrifices required. Or they’d be intimating that somehow Foley and Sotloff were asking for it, not being embedded with contemptuous troop contingents in the Green Zone somewhere. Or both.

And the way I know that is that when this did happen under a Republican president, this was the response: 

For some reason, Daniel Pearl’s murder has been elevated above those of 3,000 Americans murdered on 9/11, even though the 3,000 were innocent victims on American soil minding their own business. Pearl, on the other hand, was an extremely left-wing, nominal Jew whose reporting repeatedly gave exposure to and legitimization of Islamic terrorists.

Daniel Pearl was killed not minding his own business on an airplane or in an office building, but putting himself at risk chasing more Islamic terrorists to tell their story. But he was a mainstream media reporter–and for one of America’s most prestigious newspapers–so his life, in the mainstream media’s eyes, is far more important than common-folk Americans who conduct America’s commerce and raise families.

And Judea Pearl–in the seven years since his son’s death–has sought to legitimize this same legitimization and appeasement of terrorists, even if he won’t admit it.

They have no shame, they do not care, and their opinions on the brutal murder of a man who by all accounts was a decent person trying to shed some light on one of the most lightless places in the world are worth no more than the wind that howls between their ears.

So when one of them demands action from Obama in the name of the journalist whose barbaric killing so outraged them, ask them if they’d have preferred the rope and the tree, even if some assembly was required.

A.