Rep, McDermott To Pay More Than $1 Million to Congressman Boehner

A federal judge says House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, can collect more than $1 million in his lawsuit against Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington state.

The decision was issued in a decade-long dispute over an illegally taped telephone call. In the 1996 call, Republican leaders discussed an ethics case against then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. A Florida couple recorded the cell phone call on a radio scanner and McDermott leaked the tape to two newspapers.

Boehner sued and a federal court found that McDermott had no right to release the calls. The Supreme Court decided in December not to revisit the case.

McDermott called the court fight with Boehner “a long and costly battle,” but said the million-dollar judgment was “a small price to pay in defense of so fundamental a principle, and freedom, as the First Amendment.”

Say Anything Blog makes a powerful point:

"Just so we have this straight: When it comes to recording the private phone conversations of American citizens who also happen to be Republicans McDermott, the Democrats and their allies in the media are a-ok with it. But when it comes to creating a database of calls so that communications to and from known terrorists can be tracked to their source (which is what the FISA squabble is all about) the Democrats and their media allies are against it."