Rep. Jim McDermott has lost an appeal
in a lawsuit filed against him by Rep. John Boehner. You may remember back during the '96 campaign cycle that an old couple "just happened" to overhear a cell phone conversation between then-Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, and Boehner. McDermott got hold of the tape and released it to the press.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't that illegally tapping the phone conversations of U.S. Citizens without a warrant?
Which is why I was interested to find that McDermott is on the record as against that sort of thing.
And, he's spoken publicly
about them too:
McDermott feels that Bush is exercising his power in a way that is lessening the questioning of his power by the people, which can be seen in his recent exercise of bypassing the judiciary step of acquiring access for the NSA to tap phones in order to spy on terrorists.
“Bush is saying ‘I don’t have to obey the law,’” said McDermott. “Excuse me? That’s why we jumped all over Clinton for lying about Monica Lewinsky. We are moving back to a government who says we can do whatever we want.”
To be fair, he has offered up an explanation
as to why he should be allowed to listen in on the private conversations of two U.S. Citizens:
"The American people have a right to know when their government's leaders are plotting to deceive them, and that is exactly what was happening during a telephone call in 1996 involving Republican House leaders."
So, just so we're understanding this correctly, if you want to listen in on our own citizen's because you don't like what they're saying, that would be a GOOD thing. But if you want to listen in on terrorists who are calling people in this country, that would be a BAD thing.
I can understand people who disagree with the NSA program. I think they're wrong, but I understand where they're coming from. But, to disagree with the NSA program, and then do something like this, AND defend it!?!?! That's just amazing.