Yesterday, the Associated Press revealed that certain high-level Obama administration officials have been using secret e-mail accounts through which they conduct some of their official business, à la former EPA chief Lisa Jackson’s mysterious alias of Richard Windsor, and that the AP’s FOIA requests for more information have so far been to little avail — despite President Obama’s repeated insistence about what he assures us is his remarkably transparent administration. On Hannity last night, Sen. Rand Paul had some discouraged words about the widening gap between the president’s professions and his administration’s actions, via the WFB:

PAUL: Here’s the thing. When I hear the president speak and what he just said, if I were sitting in the audience I would stand up and cheer, because what he’s saying sounds so great. What he said recently about if an American were targeted for attack, they would get due process, but he thinks due process is him making a decision and not a judge or not a jury. So when he says that I’m not sure he really means this. I think what is happening, this constellation of scandals, one after another, Benghazi, the IRS, the reporters that he’s targeted, I guess he’s losing and to me he is losing that moral authority, the moral authority to lead the nation. Even though he sounds so great and I want to believe in what he says, he is losing that believability to the American public.

The president’s growing believability problem resulting from the administration’s multiple scandals isn’t confined to the opinion of Sen. Paul and his fellow “overreaching” Congressional Republicans, however; a new Bloomberg poll reports that almost half of Americans are unconvinced that the president is being truthful about his ostensible ignorance concerning the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups. Oof:

Forty-seven percent of Americans say they don’t believe Obama compared with 40 percent who say he is being truthful, according to a Bloomberg National Poll of 1,002 adults conducted May 31 through June 3.

More than half of political independents — 53 percent — say Obama’s explanation that he learned it from media reports is untrue, while 34 percent say they believe him. …

The doubts about Obama’s credibility come as a series of scandals have dominated news coverage, helping to diminish a post-election surge in the president’s popularity and optimism about the direction of the country. Obama’s job approval rating declined six percentage points since the last Bloomberg poll in February, to 49 percent from 55 percent, returning to its lowest level since last September.