Thomas Jefferson once said that our liberty depends on freedom of the press.  Perhaps the Obama administration agrees, and that’s why the federal government is assigning government monitors to media newsrooms.

Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about “the process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover “critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

The government has no place in the newsroom of a media outlet.  In fact, that is so incredibly important that I’m going to say it again. The government has no place in the newsroom of a media outlet.  In fact, the words “government” and “monitoring program” should never, ever be even spoken within proximity to the word “press” unless there is also the presence of a phrase like “over our collective dead bodies.”  But, as always, it gets worse.

In fact, the FCC is now expanding the bounds of regulatory powers to include newspapers, which it has absolutely no authority over, in its new government monitoring program.

The FCC has apparently already selected eight categories of “critical information” “that it believes local newscasters should cover.”

Allow me to break this down for you.  The federal government has deemed that certain categories of information are “critical” and that the news media should cover them.  As in, vee vill tell you vat to print, Comrade.  What could possibly go wrong?  “Excuse me, Fox News, we’re going to need you to stop covering Benghazi.  Instead, here’s a list of topics we believe you should be covering, including the latest golf round by King Obama and some fabricated success stories about Obamacare.  Also, please cover this story we made up heard about how citizens are giving up their evil guns by the thousands and people should join in.”

Now is when I’d make a statement about how ‘someone’ should really explain to His Wannabe American Highness that this is not how things work on this side of the pond, but here’s the thing.  He knows.  They all know.  It’s not like the Constitution is some hidden document that no one has ever heard of.  The Bill of Rights is not exactly written in hieroglyphics on a cave wall that no one’s discovered.  The Obama administration, whether you choose to accept it or not, is systematically destroying anything resembling freedom in this country.  Total surveillance, total control of the media, total control period.

So the real question is…what are we going to do about it?  Now, more than ever, the patriots will rely on independent journalists; blogs written by people on the ground in the trenches, people who refuse to be silenced.  I guarantee you that VG will be among them.  In the meantime, what are we doing to stop this?  Probably reading TMZ, or paying attention to celebrities, athletes and liberal mouthpieces—the least relevant, least useful, most ridiculous wastes of our time.

As long as we’re still sharing those memes on Facebook, though, we’re doing something.  Right?