Some mornings America’s new reality hits you the moment you turn on the computer.  The point is driven home, deep within blue country, with parallels of national concerns at the state level, with the “bizarre” backroom maneuvering on pension reform (to quote House Minority Leader Brian Newberry), and at the local level, with Tiverton’s farewell to the rule of law.

But it’s the Obama Administration that wins the spotlight, today.  There’s the new innovation in abusive use of the IRS that requires businesses to swear, under threat of perjury, that their layoffs have nothing to do with ObamaCare:

Obama officials made clear in a press briefing that firms would not be allowed to lay off workers to get into the preferred class of those businesses with 50 to 99 employees. How will the feds know what employers were thinking when hiring and firing? Simple. Firms will be required to certify to the IRS – under penalty of perjury – that ObamaCare was not a motivating factor in their staffing decisions.

At the very least, that will keep a lid on news stories giving the legislative affront to the Constitution the blame for continued economic suffering.

Speaking of news stories, here’s one that’s gotten surprisingly little play:

The U.S. under President Obama, who once promised to run the “most transparent” administration in the country’s history, fell from 32nd to 46th in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index, a drop of 13 slots. The index, compiled by the press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, analyzes 180 countries on criteria such as official abuse, media independence and infrastructure to determine how free journalists are to report.

It appears that we’ve got a long way to go to the freedom of Namibia, but at least we’re still edging out Haiti (barely).

What I can’t help but wonder is this: How can we trust the American news media to protect our freedoms when they aren’t making much noise about their own?