Boehner Favored in Taped Phone Call Case (against Jim McDermott WA-D)

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has sided with Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, in his six-year-old lawsuit against Rep. James McDermott, D-Wash., over an illegally recorded phone call.

Boehner sued McDermott after a Florida couple, using a scanner, found and recorded a 1996 conference call in which Boehner, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and other House leaders discussed strategy involving announcement of an ethics committee finding against Gingrich.

The couple gave the tape to McDermott, who was on the ethics committee at the time, and the contents ended up in news stories.
...
McDermott had admitted leaking the taped phone conversation to reporters. But he argued that he did not break the law by receiving the tape and that punishing him for making it public would violate his free-speech rights.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-congressmen-taped-call,0,502941.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

and the anti-Kerry vets, coordinating the campaign smear. Should the dem leak it?

have done it in a different manner. The telephone conversation was an express violation of an explicit condition in Gingrich's plea bargain agreement with the Etics Committee that Newt not strategize with other members of the leadership to spin Newt's plea bargain.

and the fact that he is honest and open in this situation adds to my admiration. He isn't putting any reporters in a position of protecting him. He's a real stand-up guy!

be any problem. Oh, yeah, he's a Democrat, I forgot.

Only republicans can out CIA agents without being sent to prison for 20 years.

.

.

.

his campaign last year? Lots of it. time to be like them and chance the subject to stealing.And what about the pukes tapping into the computers in the senate Judicial committee? time for Leahy to sue , I guess

than this clown.

Can't believe they've got the nerve to move against McDermott, considering all the completely vicious, stupid, dishonest, and rude things they've done to try to destroy Democrats, place their preposterous behinds at the helm.

that another Ohio Republican hasn't accused of something -- abusing campaign funds, lying to the GOP or at very least fraudulently misrepresenting actions of another Ohio GOP member -- and I'll mail you a dollar. If you can find one, PM me with your mailing address -- which is to say, there has been a major circular firing squad with the Ohio GOP this year.

Even if Boehner's right on this one, that bunch is so completely rotten, I'm sure he's done something else that should have seen him in court. I just don't know which side of the Ohio GOP rift he's on. Not that it matters to me, as an Ohio Dem -- but it will make a difference whether he's bashed during his next re-election campaign by Ken Blackwell or Larry Householder; which is to say, somebody from the Ohio GOP 'old guard' (everybody but Ken Blackwell and Joe Deters) or a former Hamilton County Repub with a chip on his shoulder (Ken Blackwell or Joe Deters).

snip>
The wiretap law makes the knowing disclosure of an illegally intercepted communication both a crime and the basis for a civil lawsuit.

In 2001, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional, at least when used to punish disclosure of information about matters of public concern by people who did not themselves participate in obtaining it unlawfully.

"A stranger's illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

Judge Hogan said that decision did not protect Mr. McDermott because "he knew of the illegality of the Martins' disclosure at the time he voluntarily accepted it."

That distinction, experts in First Amendment law said, is novel and at odds with the conventional understanding of the Supreme Court's decisions in this area.

"Applied to journalists, if this holds, it would be a disaster," said Lee Levine, who represented defendants in the Supreme Court case.

The Times published an article about the tape but was neither prosecuted nor sued, said George Freeman, an assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company

http://nytimes.com/2004/08/24/national/24tape.html

"U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan on Aug. 6 found Cooper and Time in contempt of court. Cooper faced as long as 18 months in jail, and the magazine could have been fined $1,000 a day, until he answered Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's questions......"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28286-2004Aug24.html