And the Supreme Court is out of control! WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS????? Time for a lot of COVERT TAPING OF THIS WEASEL FASCIST
A Justice's Sense of Privilege
April 12, 2004
By BOB HERBERT
Antoinette Konz is a young education reporter for The
Hattiesburg American, a daily newspaper with a circulation
of about 25,000 in Hattiesburg, Miss. Ms. Konz, 25, has
only been in the business for a couple of years, so her
outlook hasn't been soiled by the cranks and the criminals,
and the pretzel-shaped politicians that so many of us have
been covering for too many years to count.
She considered it a big deal when one of the schools on her
beat, the Presbyterian Christian High School, invited her
to cover a speech that was delivered last Wednesday by
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
About 300 people, many of them students, filled the
school's gymnasium for the speech. They greeted Justice
Scalia with a standing ovation.
Ms. Konz and a reporter for The Associated Press, Denise
Grones, were seated in the front row. They began to take
notes. And when Justice Scalia began speaking, they clicked
on their tape recorders.
What's important about this story is that Justice Scalia is
a big shot. Not only is he a member in good standing of the
nation's most august court, he's almost always among those
mentioned as a possible future chief justice.
Compared with him, Ms. Konz and Ms. Grones are nobodies.
Justice Scalia, the big shot, does not like reporters to
turn tape recorders on when he's talking, whether that
action is protected by the Constitution of the United
States or not. He doesn't like it. And he doesn't permit
it.
"Thirty-five minutes into the speech we were approached by
a woman who identified herself as a deputy U.S. marshal,"
Ms. Konz told me in a telephone conversation on Friday.
"She said that we should not be recording and that she
needed to have our tapes."
In the U.S., this is a no-no. Justice Scalia and his
colleagues on the court are responsible for guaranteeing
such safeguards against tyranny as freedom of the press. In
fact, the speech Mr. Scalia was giving at the very moment
the marshal moved against the two reporters was about the
importance of the Constitution.
Ms. Konz said neither she nor Ms. Grones wanted to comply
with the marshal's demand.
"It was very distracting, very embarrassing," she said. "We
were still trying to listen to what he was saying."
The marshal, Melanie Rube, insisted.
The A.P. reporter
tried to explain that she had a digital recording device,
so there was no tape to give up. Ms. Konz said the deputy
seemed baffled by that.
Eventually both recordings were seized.
If this had been
an old-time Hollywood movie, the Supreme Court justice
would have turned a kindly face toward the marshal and
said, in an avuncular tone: "No, no. We don't do that sort
of thing in this country. Please return the recordings."
But this is the United States in the 21st century where the
power brokers have gone mad. They've deluded themselves
into thinking they're royalty, not public servants charged
with protecting the rights and interests of the people.
Both recordings were erased. Only then was the reporters'
property returned.
When agents acting on behalf of a Supreme Court justice can
just snatch and destroy information collected by reporters,
we haven't just thumbed our nose at the Constitution, we've
taken a very dangerous step in a very ugly direction. The
depot at the end of that dark road is totalitarianism.
I called Jane Kirtley, a professor of media, ethics and law
at the University of Minnesota, and asked her what was
wrong with what the marshal did. She replied, "Everything."
Not only was it an affront to the Constitution to seize and
erase the recordings, Ms. Kirtley believes it was also a
violation of the Privacy Protection Act, a law passed by
Congress in 1980.
"It protects journalists not just from newsroom searches,"
she said, "but from the seizure of their work product
material, things like notes and drafts, and also what's
called documentary materials, which are things like these
tapes, or digital recordings."
Ms. Konz told me: "All I was doing with that tape recorder
was making sure that I was not going to misquote the
justice. My only intention was to report his words
accurately."
After the encounter with the marshal, she said, "I went
back to the office and I just felt absolutely - I just felt
horrible."
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