News From the Police State

While Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stood at the podium speaking to a group of high school students at Presbyterian Christian High School in Hattiesburg, Miss., last Wednesday, a U.S. Marshall approached two reporters in the front row and ordered them to hand over their tape recorders, that Justice Scalia, who was at that very moment intoning vigorously on the sacredness of the U.S. Constitution, did not practice the First Amendment when it came to his own speeches. One of the reporters refused, and the U.S. Marshall pryed the recorder out of her hands by main force, and then, because the Marshall couldn't figger out how to make the thing work, helped the Marshall erase that part of the speech which had been recorded. The reporter should never have done that. The reporter should have gone to jail for the sake of the Constitution, professed as sacred to the heart of the man who ordered the tape erased. And we thought Antonin had a fine head for irony!

UPDATE: Here's the account of the tape confiscation written by the very AP reporter who helped the U.S. Marshall erase her tape.