James
O'Keefe's blockbuster investigative video exposing
ACORN's willingness to accommodate
prostitution, illegal immigration and tax fraud has
already gotten two
Baltimore ACORN employees fired.
However,
Baltimore blogger Jeff Quinton points out, O'Keefe may be
vulnerable to prosecution under a Maryland law forbidding
surreptitious recording. He quotes a First Amendment
site:
Under Maryland's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act, it
is unlawful to tape record a conversation without the permission
of all the parties. See Bodoy v. North Arundel Hosp., 945 F.Supp.
890 (D. Md. 1996). Additionally, recording with criminal or
tortuous purpose is illegal, regardless of consent. Md. Code
Ann., Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 10-402.
Disclosing the contents of intercepted communications with reason
to know they were obtained unlawfully is a crime as well.
Maryland is a heavily Democratic state and Maryland resident
Linda Tripp was prosecuted under this law for recording her
conversations with Monica Lewinsky. If you don't think they'd do
it to O'Keefe, you don't know much about Maryland Democrats.
What was demonstrated by O'Keefe's project? He
explains:
Hannah Giles and I took advantage of ACORN's regard for thug
criminality by posing the most ridiculous criminal scenario we
could think of and seeing if they would comply -- which they
did without hesitation.
The most ridiculous part of the scenario? That 20-year-old Hannah
Giles -- daughter of nationally known Christian youth leader
Doug Giles -- was a
skanky prostitute named "Kenya." Hannah is a very respectable
young lady, whom I mentioned in an AmSpecBlog
post in July. So you have to shake your head at the credulity
of the ACORN employees who were so stunningly eager to help
"Kenya" and her pimp get a mortgage for a brothel.
Hot Air's Ed Morrissey writes:
Neither of the two [ACORN workers] bat an eyelash at human
trafficking while advising them to evade taxes and prosecution
for their crimes.
Why? It may have something to do with the "By Any Means
Necessary" radicalism of ACORN. If these "community organizers"
believe that the status quo constitutes systemic social
injustice, isn't indifference to the law ingrained in their
ideology? Can tax fraud be a sort of civil disobedience? It
may also be that the
11 ACORN workers charged in Florida on charges of
fraudulent voter registrations believed that election laws were
unjust, and thus could be ignored righteously.
What O'Keefe calls "thug criminality," ACORN calls "social
justice" and, in the Age of Obama, guess which
definition applies? But if Democrats push for prosecution of
O'Keefe, demanding rigorous application of the Maryland law
against secret recordings, this would not be surprising.
You can't accuse liberals of not having standards. In fact, they
have two standards -- one for them, and one for
everybody else.
