Judge: Open season on Congressmen

[mardigras]

The fact that some privileged material was incidentally captured by the search does not constitute an unlawful intrusion."
http://www.click2houston.com/politic...59/detail.html

"In this case, 15 FBI agents spent 18 hours looking at every piece of paper in the Congressman's office, and they carted away his computer hard drive as well as the hard drives of every single member of his staff. A bipartisan group of House leaders joined us in court to argue that these procedures were in direct violation of the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, which the Framers specifically designed to protect legislators from intimidation by the legislative and judicial branches. While a Congressman is not above the law, the executive branch must also follow the law.
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=68982

Not a liberal wacko post here, just an observation.... Sieze all the hard drives of any Congressman or Senator and their staffers currently accused of wrongdoing.

[Why]

harassment knows no bounds.

[FunForOne]

Wasn't william jefferson on the democratic ethics committe?

"""An affidavit filed with Hogan to justify the May search says the FBI videotaped Jefferson in August 2005 accepting $100,000 from a business executive, who actually was a government informant. The FBI said it subsequently recovered $90,000 from a freezer at Jefferson's home."""

[czarina]

Oh well, lobbying just won't do.

[Doctor Dre]

Not a liberal wacko post here, just an observation.... Sieze all the hard drives of any Congressman or Senator and their staffers currently accused of wrongdoing.

Obviously... the political parties must be compiling a lot of stats... but how do they get theses statistics you think ? ;)

[mardigras]

Obviously... the political parties must be compiling a lot of stats... but how do they get theses statistics you think ? ;)

They probably get their stats like most biased parties trying to prove a point, they pull 'em right out of their ass

[Snake Doctor]

I'm torn on this issue on many levels.

Jefferson is the congressman for the district that borders mine. Louisiana has a long history of having crooks in office and I for one would like to see every one of those dirty bastards put away for a few decades.

Also, the FBI claims to have irrefutable evidence of Jefferson taking a bribe, and found something like 90K in cash in his freezer at home.
Sorry but nobody puts 90K in legitimate funds in the freezer, it goes into a bank account or safe deposit box.

All of that being said, I don't like the precedent of the executive branch doing this to a congressman. We need very black and white separation of powers in this country with no gray areas IMHO.
Congress should have handled the investigation or a special prosecutor should have been appointed. The executive branch CANNOT EVER be given the power to investigate, intimidate, or otherwise harrass members of congress or the judiciary branch.

[MaddCaz]

get eeeemmm!!!!!