Various matters

(1) The always-tenacious Jake Tapper (see this superb grilling of White House spokesman Jay Carney about the Awlaki assassination) sat in the White House briefing room today. He watched as Carney praised the heroism of two reporters killed this morning in Syria and then waxed poetic on the Vital Importance of Journalism. That led Tapper to want to know how the White House can reconcile its claimed reverence for journalism with its unprecedented war on whistleblowers, and began his inquiry...