The Obama White House may be throwing in with Slow Joe against Hillary, but the memo appears to have not reached Foggy Bottom yet:
A set of new, tough State Department rules that cover federal workers' speech were put in place to chill speech as the Congressional probes of Hillary Clinton's email scandal and the Benghazi attack, critics are saying, and could interfere with the proceedings.
"Any attempt by an agency to interfere with the testimony of former employees, who often feel free to be more candid about problems in their former agency, would weaken the checks and balances established by our Constitution," Senator Chuck Grassley, R-IA, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement, reports FoxNews.com.
State issued the nineteen pages of revised rules last month, reports the blog Diplopundit, and included wording about Congressional testimony, review times for blog and social media posts, and restrictions on current or former employees when it comes to publishing personal stories.
Peter Van Buren, an ex-foreign service officer who was forced out in 2012 after publishing a book and blog about the department's efforts in Iraq, told Fox News that the new rules "smell like bad fish," and he finds it "kind of coincidental" that they were issued during the [Rodham] email scandal and the upcoming Benghazi hearings.
“It looks like they are trying to chill the speech of their employees," said Van Buren.
"It's an absolute overreach," Representative Jason Chaffetz, R-UT3, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told the Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal. "They should be able to talk to the media, they should be able to speak to Congress. They have an absolute and total right to interact with Congress. There are whistle-blower protections.
That’s not a balanced approach to current and former employees' rights."
No, it's not, Mr. Chairman, because State isn't interested in current and former employees' rights. They're interested in covering Hillary Clinton's gigantic ass, and probably a great deal beyond her portion of these egregious shenanigans, since I cannot believe that O would effectively endorse Vice President Rogaine on one hand and give the thumbs-up signal to John Kerry to aid and abet Mrs. Clinton's foundering coverup on the other. It doesn't make any sense for him to tie his Regime to her sinking ship, so there's got to be more there that we don't know about that he doesn't want anybody see. So much so that he's authorized State to force every one of its employees into becoming a potential obstructor of justice and, at the very least, target of contempt of Congress charges.
Foggy Bottom's explanatory statement was bland to the point of incoherence:
State Department spokesman Mark Toner, though, said the revisions actually "are more protective of employee speech as they establish a higher bar for limiting employees’ writing or speaking in their personal capacity, while also recognizing changing technologies in communication, such as social media."
Even though, as Mr. Van Buren points out, State's employee speech restrictions were already tighter than a bull's butt in fly season. These revisions can have no other purpose than to bind and gag current and former State Department employees from cooperating with Congress's investigations in the slightest, upon penalty of termination and even criminal prosecution.
Of course, upon reflection State's stonewalling and footdragging would, in context, redound to the Empress's disadvantage, since The One doesn't have to concern himself with public perceptions anymore. Maybe there is a method to this madness after all.
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