Late last month the Weekly Standard ran a Scrapbook item headlined “The Thinness of His Skin.”

Nut graf:

[F]or startling insight into the mind of our 44th president, we cannot do better than his recent commencement address at Hampton University in Virginia. Most graduation speeches are predictably anodyne and tend to rely on well-worn generalities. Obama, by contrast, was refreshingly specific at Hampton: He does not like the newfangled means by which many of today’s college graduates​—or anyone, for that matter​—obtain information.

You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter. With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations—none of which I know how to work—information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.

Now Barack Obama has embraced information as a tool of incarceration.

From Saturday’s New York Times:

Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press

Nut graf:

In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press.

The Times piece mostly focuses on the prosecution of “veteran intelligence bureaucrat” Thomas A. Drake, currently under indictment for leaking information about the National Security Agency’s post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.

So Obama is prosecuting leaks that didn’t even happen on his watch.

In 2008 Barack Obama was the classic empty-vessel candidate. Voters could attach to him any characteristics they wanted, largely because Obama ran on biography, not ideology.

But we now know what Obama’s not: He’s not liberal (never mind a socialist), he’s not bipartisan, and he’s not transparent.

You can discuss among yourselves whether the American people bought a pig in a poke. But there’s no question that some of them bought a poke in the eye.