“We support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech…”-President Barak Obama, May 19 Middle East speech

Obama talks about freedom of speech, while at the same time bans reporters from being present at White House press briefings.

Reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Herald, are the latest to be banned from the White House.

White House spokesman Matt Lehrich, admits the move regarding the Boston Herald, was a purely personal decision.  Basically Obama didn’t like the editorial decisions of the paper: “I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters. My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting U.S. President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits.”

In other words, Obama was mad that the Boston Herald didn’t make his visit to Boston a front page story!

Regarding the San Francisco Chronicle, reporters were banned after the SFC posted video of a protest in which Obama was heckled (bad a poorly sung song) for failing to come through on many promises, and on the treatment of Army Private Bradley Manning.

The amazing thing, if you watch the video, is that It doesn’t really make Obama look bad.  He wasn’t trying to avoid their questions, or sending his goons to squash the protesters.  So why did he ban the SFC reporter who posted the video?  The official White House response was that the SFC is part of the “print pool”, meaning newspaper reporters should not be making and posting videos!

Wake up people of the United States, Obama is a hypocrite, just like most presidents before him.