As Byron York points out, a U.S. president who’s beginning the launch of a (breathtakingly cynical) “inequality agenda” probably doesn’t want the fact that he turned his wife’s 50th birthday party at the White House into a lavish Hollywood-style gala for 500 A-listers to get much play in the news:

… the White House apparently did not want to see photos of the First Lady’s glittery gala circulating around the Internet. So it imposed a strict rule: No cell phones. “Guests were told not to bring cellphones with them, and there was a cellphone check-in area for those who did,” reported the Chicago Tribune. “Signs at the party told guests: No cellphones, no social media.” People magazine added: “Guests had been greeted by a ‘cell phone check’ table where they deposited their camera phones on arrival and it was understood that this was not an occasion for Tweeting party photos or Facebooking details.” The publications cited sources who insisted on anonymity for fear of White House reprisal.

This is the sort of thing that ought to turn Americans’ minds back to the reasons for the founding of their country, if not the French Revolution.  It’s the sort of thing that ought to drive home the reality that one can have integrity or support Obama, but not both.

But the party is just an emblem of the Obama administration’s approach to ruling.  Quite a bit more serious, for example, is Greta Van Susteren’s claim that the White House initiated a broad, subversive campaign to stop Fox News from reporting on Benghazi.  (This was after, of course, it targeted one of Fox’s reporters as if he were a spy… for the American people, I guess.)

If the American electorate doesn’t force a change of direction, future presidents are only going to get worse, and there aren’t that many steps between where we are and where we ought all to dread to go.