Boehner Wants Protection From Illegal Wiretapping - But Only For Himself

When a federal judge ordered Rep. Jim McDermott to pay House Minority Leader John A. Boehner and his attorneys more than $1 million in damages and legal fees for leaking an illegally taped phone call to the media, Boehner said he pursued the case because “no one — including members of Congress — is above the law."

Why, then, is the Ohio Republican trying to squash similar lawsuits against telecommunications companies who cooperated with the government in warrantless electronic surveillance, ask the attorneys behind the class action suits.

“Mr. Boehner is trying to kick millions of Americans out of court in a wiretapping case while collecting more than $1 million in his own wiretapping case. It’s the height of hypocrisy and seems to indicate that members of Congress are entitled to their day in court but the average American is not,” said Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the consumer rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The criticism comes amid continuing negotiations among House and Senate leaders in both parties as they seek common ground with the White House on updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Boehner’s efforts put him in the position of arguing that telecom companies are above the law in violating their customers’ privacy rights, say those lobbying against letting the companies off the hook.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10458.html

The blatant hypocrisy on display here is stunning.

When ordinary Americans were being wiretapped, Boehner's attacked them and their right to privacy, claiming "I believe (phone companies) deserve immunity" from the law. But when Boehner himself was being wiretapped, he had no hesitation to claim his own right to privacy, claiming "no one is above the law."

When ordinary Americans are victimized, Boehner's taken every opportunity to caricature their representatives at EFF and ACLU as "unscrupulous trial lawyers" who are "trying to find a way to get into the pockets of the American companies." But when Boehner himself is the victim, suddenly defense attorneys don't seem so unscrupulous to him, and he has no problem employing his own litigators to receive a $1.1 million reward.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/05/boehner-wiretapping

And arrogant as well. It's ok for you, me, or any other private citizen to be wiretapped, but heaven forbid if a Republican with some amount of stroke gets wiretapped. All I can say is fuck you Boehner.

C'mon Boner... except..

"except me, Bush Cheney Rove Rice Miers Addington Libby Gonzales Goodling Sampson
Doan Mukasey . . . .