The Obama Administration had Reuters pull a story that criticized its tax plan as backdoor taxes on the middle class, and the news service quickly complied like a good minion.

Obama administration aides appealed to the Reuters White House reporting team to kill a story by another reporter of the news service that suggested the president’s new budget blueprint included “backdoor” tax hikes.

A White House official told TPMDC the Reuters story was “falsely stating that the President’s budget raises taxes for middle class families, when in fact the opposite is true.”

The official said when the administration saw the story, published yesterday afternoon, they contacted one of the Reuters White House correspondents….

The official said the Reuters White House team “worked to quickly remedy the situation and helped get the story completely withdrawn” last night.

And so the story simply disappeared, an advisory sent out telling news websites that the story will be “replaced” sometime next week. In other words, the news was censored because the Obama Administration didn’t like what it said. The White House leaned on Reuters to pull inconvenient news.

Why would Reuters comply so quickly when most of the media didn’t care what the last administration wanted? Perhaps because this administration, groomed in the Chicago political machine, has appeared more likely to abuse power to punish enemies and reward friends. Be it violating senior creditor rights to help left-wing unions, dismissing charges against black nationalist groups who engaged in voter intimidation, or closing mostly Republican car dealerships and destroying livelihoods on a whim.

Or because Reuters is a lefty company in the first place, and once the story caused fellow lefties too much trouble it was pulled. Because we can’t have Barack Obama, His Holiness of Hope’N'Change, feeling uncomfortable.