Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Appellate Court says McDermott owes Boehner $600k

As noted in today's OpinionJournal, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to uphold a $600,000 District Court judgment in favor of House Majority Leader John Boehner and against former Ranking Member of the House Ethics Committee Jim McDermott for disclosing an illegally obtained cell phone conversation to New York Times reporter Adam Clymer in January, 1997. McDermott resigned from the Ethics Committee because of this matter.

The Supreme Court previously considered and remanded this case when it decided
a similar case involving 18 USC §2511 (Bartnicki v. Vopper).

You may recall McDermott from his "Baghdad Democrat" days, and that he had accepted a $5,000 campaign donation from one of Saddam Hussein's cronies, returning it only when the Weekly Standard published the disclosure. McDermott also invited Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to visit Seattle right before the WTO meeting in 1999. Frontpagemag.com has named him one of the Ten Most Dishonorable Americans.

And if you recall, President Bush considered Times reporter Adam Clymer to be "in the major leagues" or something like that.

5 comments:

Rick Ballard said...

Hey, you can't post a picture of one of those here. Children may be reading this. At least put a black bar on it.

I hope Boehner garnishees McDemott's salary. Or takes his house.

And then demands that the ethics committee censure him - or just boot him altogether. It's nice to see a Copperhead take a hit.

Kitty said...

It was technologically impossible for the Martins to have recorded this call in the manner that they claimed. Nothing available from Radio Shack had the capability to do what they asserted happened. The cold hard fact is that the Democrats had Newt's phone in D. C. hardwired.

Myron said...

Bush is leading the Party down the wrong path

Far Right-Wing Minded

Anonymous said...

Ugh. Just before dinner, too.

The good thing is that as you get out of Seattle, which is essentially his entire district and where certain neighborhoods are frozen in amber back in 1974, the tolerance for guys like that drops off pretty quickly.

Rick Ballard said...

kcrouch,

The problem is that cold hard proof is needed of that fact in order to sustain the argument. It is certainly a possibility nad I know of nothing on earth that would be beneath them but the DA in FL was probably busy cheking oxycontin prescriptions and just couldn't find the time for a thorough investigation.