It’s difficult to keep up with Scandal-o-Rama these days, isn’t it? Let’s bring in a seasoned hand in analyzing government corruption and intimidation. Carl Bernstein appeared on Morning Joe earlier today, declaring the conduct of the Obama administration “outrageous,” and their pattern of behavior “a nuclear event” waiting to happen.

So, he’s talking about scrubbing terrorism from the Benghazi talking points and intimidating State Department career staffers, right? Or is it using the IRS to target political opponents, as in Watergate? Or seizing the phone records of a major media outlet and searching for the source on a story embarrassing to the White House?

Maybe this doesn’t help much after all (via NRO’s Andrew Johnson):

On Morning Joe today, Carl Bernstein unleashed on the Obama administration in light of news that the Department of Justice obtained the telephone records of Associated Press Reporters, calling it a pattern of behavior that was “waiting to be a nuclear event.” “This is outrageous, and it is totally inexcusable,” he said. “This administration has been terrible on this subject from the beginning.”

Oh, okay, it’s the AP phone-records seizure that finally has Carl Bernstein exercised. That figures. Still, Bernstein doesn’t pull any punches in attacking the White House, and puts the blame all the way to the top:

After host Joe Scarborough pointed out that the Obama administration has prosecuted twice as many leaks as all previous ones combined, Bernstein called out the administration for trying to intimidate both government sources and reporters, dismissing the idea that the White House may not have known what the DOJ was doing. “The idea is to try and make an example of those people who talk to reporters, especially on national-security matters,” he said. “National security is always the false claim of administrations trying to hide things that people ought to know.”

This is less about hiding what has already happened and keeping the AP and other media outlets from working with people in the know for what happens later. They want potential sources to know that Big Brother will find them regardless of a reporter’s promise to keep their identities confidential. They want reporters to know that they’re being watched. The Obama DoJ isn’t interested in justice; they want to impose their political will without effective opposition.

I wonder if the media will start connecting dots between this and Benghazi, and the IRS scandals, and Operation Fast and Furious, and …