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Reprinted from NewsMax.com
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With Carl
Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff |
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For the story behind the story... |
Sunday, April 9, 2006
10:03 p.m. EDT
There's at least one Democrat who unequivocally favors domestic
wiretapping without a court order - and it may cost him his House
seat in the next election.
No, we're not talking about President Bush's terrorist
surveillance program. We're referring to leaking snippets of
secretly recorded conversations between elected Republicans to the
press.
That's just what Rep. Jim McDermott did in 1996, after a Florida
couple intercepted a conference call among several House leaders -
and he gave a copy of their recording to the New York Times.
One of McDermott's victims, House Majority Leader John Boehner,
filed suit in 1998 - and every court that has ruled in the case
since has found in Boehner's favor.
Two weeks ago the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. fined
McDermott $700,000.
No matter. The Washington Democrat continues to maintain that he
and his sources did the right thing.
"The third person in line to be president was plotting a
deception on the [House] ethics committee and the American people in
private," McDermott insists, referring to former Speaker of the
House Newt Gingrich - the main target caught on the tape.
Comments like that have even some of Washington state's normally
supportive news outlets rolling their eyes.
"McDermott ought to give up the pretense of nobility and just
admit he broke the law," the Tacoma Tribune editorialized last week.
The brouhaha has offered Washington Republicans new hope that
McDermott's political number may finally be up.
His opponent, Steve Beren, has seized on the incumbent's
wiretapping hypocrisy and calls McDermott's antics "an
embarrassment."
"He opposes the Patriot Act and opposes the NSA terrorist
wiretapping program. But he has no problem with illegally using
tapes from real domestic wiretapping of a fellow congressman," Beren
says.
In more good news for Republicans, McDermott is expected to
appeal the wiretap ruling to the Supreme Court, which could keep the
case - as well questions about his misconduct - alive through the
November election.
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