skin reactions like blisters, peeling rash, hives, or mouth sores to address possible life-threatening conditions. talk about your alcohol use, liver disease and before you reduce or stop cymbalta. dizziness or fainting may occur upon standing. take the next step. talk to your doctor. cymbalta can help. welcome back to morning joe. is this an endorsement, by the way? pretty close to it. all right. that s in new york city. we re going to stick to the irs story. a couple of really, really strong must reads on this. first, we ll start with the washington post. i believe that the government has valid purposes that are more minimal and that public service is essentially noble. but most americans, myself included become libertarians when a policeman is rude and
we don t have a budget. they haven t had a budget conference between the house and senate. they ve been heralding the fact they passed a budget in the house and senate. they don t have a budget conference, not conferring over the differences. the law was to pass a budget by april 15th. that s come and gone. april 15th, by the way, when we re filing our taxes. for four years, the senate didn t even have a budget, the government doesn t have a budget. those are failures that people understand and goes to the heart of the distrust. and you add the overweight of these episodes and these problems that exist whether it s benghazi, irs or the a.p. issue with the justice department and it s breathtaking. you re already dealing with a discouraged electorate for sure. former senator olympia snowe, thank you so much. thank you, mika. little depressing. yeah. come on, now. you can do it.
responsibility when they wake up in the morning and go to work and start picking up the phone and making calls? it is. and the associated press in particular as an institution has been more aggressive, i would say, in the last couple of years in trying to do more investigative work and dig out more stories. and this administration has a history of really coming down on people who talk to reporters in any capacity. i mean, if someone has the audacity to say something critical of obama care, they take usually take it back fairly quickly or don t speak to reporters at all again because there is such a focus on keeping the story line and the narrative the way the administration wants it. and sometimes these efforts can become excessive. and may be what we re seeing from the justice department is really the embodiment of that mentality. we were so critical of the bush administration in dealing with the press at times. it s just a little perspective
unfolding over the next few days? particularly in my view probably should be getting out in front with you on meet the press this weekend to sit down and kind of expose all of this. how do you see this thing playing out over the next few days? do we frame it? do they continue to back off of it? what do you see happening here? i don t want to disagree with your media strategy. i think that s the way they ought to approach it. i think seriously, that s it. in a vacuum, there s all this connective tissue here that doesn t need to be there. all of these things are somehow related or go to similar motivation. it s like ron was saying about benghazi. there s a tremendous amount of overreach here that doesn t get us away from the point about what was mishandled or how they didn t respond to certain questions. and, you know, with senator feinstein who said on meet the press on sunday, i don t know why they didn t call this a terrorist attack when that s clearly what it was from day one.
and it s just a breadth of what the government seems to be doing here. if they do it, it s supposed to be extraordinary circumstances, it has to be signed off by the attorney general himself and it has to be narrowly limited. there s nothing narrow about the scope of this, about the duration of records that they re seeking. no wonder the a.p. is outraged. no wonder every reporter is outraged. this is an extraordinary breach of the relationship between government and the media. it certainly is. michael steele, too, it is very important politically for the republican party now not to overreach. sometimes you just get out of the way. i mean the republicans on the hill that want to come out and say something over the top to raise money are hurting the party and also hurting the investigation. right now, you ve got an enraged press corps that understands what a serious breach this is. and i just hope they don t overplay their hand. well, from benghazi to the