A federal shield law is needed, but that alone won’t absolve Obama for secret subpoenas on journalists.

Embarrassed by revelations of his administration’s flagrant intrusion into press freedoms, President Obama last week sought to squelch the bad publicity with an announcement that he still supports long ­dormant legislation establishing a federal shield law.

The law, which would protect reporters from being forced to reveal confidential sources, is worth resuscitating. But it’s a tattered and inadequate fig leaf for the embattled president. The proposed law is riddled with loopholes, and it’s impossible to assess whether it would have prevented the Department of Justice from snooping through journalists’ phone records because administration officials have refused to discuss how they obtained subpoenas in secret.

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By George Will

Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government’s large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question “Will Barack Obama’s scandals derail his second-term agenda?” was a question: What agenda?

The scandals are interlocking and overlapping in ways that drain his authority. Everything he advocates requires Americans to lavish on government something his administration, and big government generally, undermines — trust.

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Will is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.

By Kathleen Parker

Breaking news: Conservative organizations suddenly have found common cause with one of their favorite objects of contempt — the benighted Mainstream Media.

Or as the tea party queen and former Alaska governor likes to put it, the “lamestream media.”

In a twist of irony, the two groups have coalesced around a common enemy: the U.S. government.

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Parker is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.

Republicans in Congress say they want to protect individuals with pre-existing conditions, but where is their concern for the uninsured in Virginia?

Republicans still fighting hard to turn Obamacare into a short-lived failure suddenly have grown in compassion for the uninsured sick.

Virginians living in high-poverty, medically underserved rural areas should recognize crocodile tears when they see them, and ask: Where was the GOP’s concern for the uninsured before the Affordable Care Act? Where would it be were the party able to kill the ACA by a thousand budget cuts?

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By Christopher Strom

Looking on the recent terrorist attack that occurred in Boston, it’s clear that the lessons from the past continue to persist unabated in our intelligence organizations.

After the terrorist attack of 9/11, then President George W. Bush sought enactment of the U.S. Patriot Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001), which was signed into law October 2001.

This vital and ever-evolving law allowed federal law enforcement to monitor terrorist activity both inside the United States and around the world in order to keep us all safe.

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Strom, of Roanoke, is a former U.S. Marine, retired sergeant from the NYPD Intelligence Divisions Counter Terrorism Unit. He served in Iraq as the lead tactical debriefing officer and continues to instruct on domestic/counter terrorism strategies to U.S. special forces, law enforcement and colleges.

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By Kathleen Kennedy

A couple weeks ago, members of the Southwest Virginia Songwriters Association drew attention online for literally singing the praises of Rep. Bob Goodlatte for his work to prevent online piracy. Shortly afterward, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, the congressman called for a comprehensive review of the current copyright system in order to adapt it to the “digital age.” Given the incredibly vehement opposition engendered by the last proposal Goodlatte sponsored, the Stop Online Piracy Act, it is worth taking a moment, before beginning a new debate, to consider the modern Internet environment and why SOPA failed.

I grew up in the musical community of the Roanoke Valley, so I can certainly understand the songwriters association’s desire to protect their creations. But the reality is that measures like SOPA will not achieve that goal. In fact, SOPA’s effect would be almost the exact opposite of its intended impact.

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Kennedy is a C.P. Davis Scholar at Columbia University studying engineering. She is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School and the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School.

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Today we had a front page story about the U.S. Department of Justice secretly obtaining records for 20 telephone lines belonging to the Associated Press and its reporters. Because some of the numbers were for the main line to AP offices, the snooping affected as many as 100 reporters and their sources.

It’s an enormously improper interference with the freedom of the press resulting from years of increasingly aggressive investigations into leaks. Although some began under the Bush administration, the Obama administration has continue to pursue these investigations and even escalated attacks on journalists and their sources. Trevor Timm, who co-founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation with Daniel Ellsburg, the whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers, traces the roots of these efforts aimed at intimidation and suppression of information. Timm notes on the foundation’s blog that the Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers under the Espionage Act than all other previous administrations combined.

He also points to software used by the FBI to sift through government emails and texts to cull out targeted names and key phrases. The Washington Post has reported that government officials discovered to have communicated with particular reporters have received warnings.

The New York Times and other news outlets have also been the subject of leak investigations following reports about U.S. cyber attacks and drone strikes. Last year, DOJ lawyers even argued in court that reporters’ privilege doesn’t exist for those covering national security.

Is Congress concerned about this crack-down on journalists? Nope, congressional leaders have encouraged and even demanded more severe punishment for leaks.

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Politically motivated scrutiny won’t help curb abuses by secret money groups.

A few months before the 2010 midterm elections that were disastrous for him and his party, President Barack Obama decried the “flood of attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names.”

“We don’t know who’s behind these ads, and we don’t know who’s paying for them,” Obama said in his Aug. 21, 2010, weekly address. The president blamed the proliferation of secret money groups on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, and he blasted congressional Republicans for doing nothing to contain the influence of such groups.

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Mary Davye Devoy

For years, victims’ rights groups and advocates have been given free rein to repeatedly tell their stories, push through rarely questioned state and federal legislation, and receive unlimited media attention.

Crime victims lead the charge in mandatory minimum sentences, stripping judges and juries of the ability to implement punishments based on the facts and circumstances of individual cases. They have lowered the threshold of defining what is a crime, assisted in making the standards of guilt easier, increased and expanded punishments, and approved of prosecutors holding all the cards when it comes to piling on charges.

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Devoy is a volunteer advocatefor data-driven reform of Virginia’ssex offender registry and laws.

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By Donald Nuechterlein

Recent events in Washington, Moscow and Damascus suggest the U.S. is edging closer to limited intervention in Syria’s civil war. Israel’s bombing of facilities near Damascus, Secretary of State John Kerry’s talks with President Putin in Moscow and President Obama’s statement about Syria’s possible use of chemical weapons raise new options for U.S. action.

Yet, the question remains: Why should the United States get involved in Syria’s civil war? The conventional answer is: America has a responsibility to stop humanitarian outrages that endanger neighboring countries. But the more important question, one not addressed by those urging Obama to use force in Syria, is this: At what cost?

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Nuechterlein is a political scientist and lecturer who lives near Charlottesville. He is the author of “Defiant Superpower: The New American Hegemony.”