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In Florida, which has a similar law, the issue has been raised from time to time and always with the result that prosecutors cleared the supposed offender so long as the recording was of a public event. The first time was decades ago when a liberal Democrat Congressman said foolish things before a group of high school students. A sometime contributor to the student newspaper who was there recorded the session and, catching up with the Congressman on the way out, asked him to explain his remarks.

The Congressman -- who had long been in office and was not aging well -- then realized that he had been recorded and was in political peril because of his comments. So he tried to grab the student's recorder, and to make him give it up, began to choke him. As the kid squirmed and resisted, a teacher intervened and the issue was referred to the principal. Under threat, the student held firm and, on the advice of his father, insisted on a ruling by the local prosecutor.

Initially, a staff lawyer in the prosecutor's office made noises to the effect that the kid was in big trouble and should give the audio tape to the Congressman before an official inquiry was launched. Fortunately, the kid's parents lawyered up and the local paper -- a major daily -- learned of the incident. The elected prosecutor himself swiftly ruled that the kid had done nothing wrong because the recording had been made at a public event.

The Congressman and the school authorities of course had behaved badly and swiftly retreated into self protective versions and explanations of the episode. If something like it happened today, the kid would be on Fox News the next day and the Congressman and the school would be sweating out bad publicity and the risk of a lawsuit.