From Mary, via Atrios

The article is from the online version of the Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.

Once again, Robert Novak is implicated--apparently he received copies of the purloined memos, and used them as the basis of at least one column, if not several. Bob says he won't comment--imagine that--although I wonder if he'd crack under Susan MacDougal-like time for contempt.

This is my favorite paragraph, by the way:

As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem.

In other words, the "hey, how can you expect Republicans to be ethical?" defense. By the way, the Democrats assert that they were NOT informed of the problem until November 2003.

Regardless of when the Democrats became aware of the problem, the fact that Republicans will stoop to this level of ethical relativism is a clear indication of their patterns of behavior that have been evident certainly since the 2000 election, and indeed, throughout the rise of the neo-con movement. I mean, shit, you had goddamned Henry Hyde on Clinton's Impeachment Committee...Newt Gingrich parsing the difference between oral sex and intercourse...and Bob Livingston almost becoming Speaker, until Larry Flynt cut him down to size.

Then there's Enron "gaming" the energy markets to stick it to California consumers. And, recently a Connecticut utility, in the face of the coldest New England temperatures in fifty years, chose to sell natural gas in the spot market instead of using it to produce electricity--while threatening to impose rolling blackouts on consumers who had the temerity to want to stay warm.

I haven't even mentioned Halliburton, they of the "charge $2.50 a gallon to the government for gasoline that costs seventy cents to buy wholesale." Nothing like a no-bid contract to make you want to take a three-hour lunch.

Now you have this. What the hell else is it going to take before people realize that the Republican neo-con movement doesn't give a damn about anything except keeping their greedy hands in the till for as long as it takes to steal it all? Because that's what they want--all of it. Their attitude is that the public, i.e., the rest of us, have for too long demanded such luxuries as jobs, pensions, health care (I'm sure they thank god we've accepted the patchwork that doubles for a health care system here)--and, heaven's forbid, child-care and public education...

They won't be satisfied until they've returned the country to 19th century conditions...