Free Republic

A Massachusetts woman with the good sense to record her cop encounter on her cell phone is now facing felony wiretapping charges because she did not inform the officers that they were being recorded–something state law requires. Karen Dziewit was drinking outside an apartment building in Springfield, Massachusetts on Saturday night. Residents complained that she was yelling at them and refused to calm down. The responding officers decided to arrest 24-year-old Dziewit for causing a disturbance. Just before she was taken into custody, however, she activated the recording feature on her phone. Eventually, police searched her purse and discovered that...

Ten years ago Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA7), known in more recent years as Baghdad Jim for his unqualified support of that city's former tyrant, was serving on the House Ethics Committee. Two Democratic Party activists, who had illegally recorded a telephone conversation between Representative John Boehner and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, delivered the hot tape to McDermott. McDermott made a the first of a series of truly bad choices. Rather than pursuing his passion for Gingrich through the channels of the Ethics Committee, he delivered the tape to a reporter in what the trial judge ruled was a malicious attempt...