Let me see if I understand this:

On Independence Day, a day above all others to remember the ideals of freedom and liberty that America is supposed to be a living example of, I have to read that

• the press is being required to make all aspects of its investigations accountable to the government when reporting on that government or it will face punishment by that same government
  
• that the Pentagon, under a clause stuffed into an education bill, has been quietly collecting a nationwide database on all high school students to keep track of each student's name age, GPA, SSN, address, phone number and race, to better target their military recruitment, primarily at families too poor to afford college.
  
• and that once again the nations legislators are finally taking a stand on the inexplicably-timed issue of flag burning, rather than publicizing who they'll support to take O'Connor's place on the supreme court or why they're continuing to give war-profiteers Haliburton and KBR billions of dollars to provide over-priced supplies to troops in a war that their former CEO pushed for while working as Vice-President.
  

This isn't even irony.

This is hypocracy.
This is lying.
This is the citizens of the United States getting fucked by their government again.

Happy birthday, America. You think you'll get a holiday reach-around?