My favorite part is at the very end where the marshal says that by erasing the tape he was rightfully providing for Scalia's "security." Ah yes, the old bomb in the cassette tape trick...
The Associated Press and the Hattiesburg American filed a lawsuit Monday against the U.S. Marshals Service over an incident in April in which a federal marshal erased reporters' recordings of a speech Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave to high school students....
During the April 7 speech in Hattiesburg, a deputy federal marshal, identified as Rube, demanded that AP reporter Denise Grones and Hattiesburg American reporter Antoinette Konz erase recordings of the justice's remarks. The reporters had not been told before the speech that they could not use tape recorders.
When the AP reporter resisted, the marshal took the digital recorder out of her hands. The reporter then showed Rube how to erase the recording.
Rube then reached across Grones and demanded that Konz hand over her tape. Konz surrendered the tape and, after the speech, was able to get it back only after she erased the recording in front of the marshal....
Nehemiah Flowers, the U.S. marshal for the Southern District of Mississippi, said later that the deputy's erasure of the recordings was appropriate, given that one of the service's responsibilities is to provide a traveling Supreme Court justice with security. - AP
