DEMOCRACY DIES IN DARKNESS: Barack Obama gives hush-hush Boston talk…on hoops.

Ex-President Barack Obama gave a secret talk in Boston yesterday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where organizers threatened to eject and ban credentialed journalists for simply doing their jobs — prohibiting them from tweeting or reporting on the event, both during and after.

“Everyone involved in this blanket coverage ban should be embarrassed,” said Ken Paulson, the president of the First Amendment Center at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. “I’m sure President Obama has his pick of lucrative speaking gigs. Why pick one that’s the antithesis of transparency?”

Why, indeed?