This is what political persecution looks like. This, right here. Look no further. David Daleiden, Sandra Merritt, and the Center For Medical Progress are now facing 15 felony charges for committing the crime of exposing Planned Parenthood's crimes.

As you may recall, the Center For Medical Progress released a series of videos in 2015 exposing Planned Parenthood's baby trafficking operation. Hours and hours of undercover footage captured various high ranking Planned Parenthood officials as they confessed to selling the severed limbs and disemboweled organs of dead children, and on several occasions it showed them actually in the act of negotiating over fees. In one particularly ghoulish episode, an abortionist worried that she was getting "low balled" on the price of a murdered child's body part, exclaiming, "I want a Lamborghini!"

But, as it turns out, Planned Parenthood officials trying to sell dead babies on camera is not compelling proof that Planned Parenthood officials sell dead babies. When a Planned Parenthood official says, in effect, "Why, yes, we sell baby organs — now how much will you pay for a liver?" that is, according to our justice system and the media, still insufficient evidence that Planned Parenthood actually does the thing they admitted to doing. Instead, the video is only evidence that the sinless angels at Planned Parenthood are being ruthlessly victimized by the bullies who shot the video.

The case against Daleiden is as weak as the case in defense of Planned Parenthood. California prosecutors allege that Daleiden recorded the videos without the consent of his subjects, which is obviously true, but if that constitutes a criminal act then all undercover journalism is a crime. Prosecutors say the baby butchers had an expectation of privacy, but this is laughable considering the fact that many of these conversations took place in restaurants and at a highly attended abortionist convention. Subtitles are necessary in most of the videos because you can barely hear the conversation over the din of the crowd. At any rate, as Ben Shapiro points out, courts have already ruled that it is not illegal to tape private conversations between representatives of a company and undercover journalists. Again, if it were illegal, there could be no such thing as undercover journalism.

Of course, California has a way around this. Their former Attorney General, Kamala Harris, collaborated with Planned Parenthood to draft legislation that would specifically target, and retroactively criminalize, the Center For Medical Progress, and in the process journalism itself. Harris has been deep in the pockets of baby killers for a long time, and crafting this law at the behest of Planned Parenthood in order to punish Planned Parenthood's enemies is just the culmination of years spent as a prostitute for the abortion industry.

Fortunately, the Center For Medical Progress is not backing down, even in the face of outright political persecution. In response to the felony charges, they released a new video just today, this one showing an abortionist giggle satanically as she complains that killing babies is a real arm workout. "I have to hit the gym," she said with a laugh, in reference to the physical exertion involved in dismembering human beings. More importantly, she seemed to admit that sometimes babies born alive after an abortion are killed or left to die. When asked what she does if signs of life are present after an abortion, she responded, coyly, that it depends on who is in the room with her.

But these allusions to infanticide will, as we've seen, lead to no criminal charges against anyone — except, perhaps, some additional charges against the people who blew the whistle. For all of the fretting over Trump's alleged stifling of the press — because he says mean things about them on Twitter, or because he didn't provide the right kind of donuts to the press pool, or whatever — here we have an actual example of journalists being arrested and imprisoned for doing journalism. And where are the supposed advocates of a free press now? Where are the mainstream media vanguards of truth and justice ensuring that "democracy doesn't die in darkness"? Where is everyone?

Nowhere to be found, predictably.

The media generally has a very high opinion of itself and is quick to inform us about just how important and courageous they are. Like any normal American, I usually just laugh when these pompous, self-serving egomaniacs sing love songs to themselves. But the truth is that journalists do have an important job and would be courageous if they actually did it.

They are supposed to shine light into the darkness — the problem is that they usually focus on shining light into the light, or they turn the light off and just make up politically convenient stories about what's happening in the darkness. Daleiden and his compatriots actually went into the darkness and turned on their flashlights. And now we're seeing why that does take guts, and why most of the cowards who call themselves journalists would never consider doing it themselves. The forces that operate in the darkness don't like to be exposed, and they have the means to punish any who attempt to do so. The media, most of the time, is aligned with these insidious forces. Daleiden went up against them, and now they're trying to eat him alive for it.

As I talk about in my book, modern liberalism is a death cult, and the one thing you cannot do is desecrate or jeopardize the cult's highest sacrament: abortion. Those who venture in that direction will be made to pay the price. And the hypocrites in our culture who claim to value "free speech" and a "free press" will just look the other way.

Any decent, patriotic American should be outraged today.

To see more from Matt Walsh, visit his channel on TheBlaze.