I am really annoyed at government leaks.

I'm reading through the Washington Post article about some obscure non-profit group that operated from 1996-2001 (Former DeLay aide enriched by nonprofit). Maybe I'll say more about it later, the guy who set it up stopped working for DeLay back in 1997 so it's hard to see this as very relevant.

But this little snippet caught my attention, from the 2nd page of the msnbc we post:

Formally, Buckham was a consultant to the board, but he said in an October 2003 deposition taken by Federal Election Commission lawyers and obtained by The Post that he had a verbal understanding allowing him to take whatever actions he deemed "in the best interest of the USFN pertaining to issues that they cared about."

It seems to me that a deposition given to lawyers for the government should be under some sort of seal. It seems that someone in government can't keep their mouth shut.

It's one thing when a newspaper is chasing a story about government malfeasance and must get leaks from people involved to expose the wrongdoing to the public. But in this case the crime, if indeed there is any crime at all, involves a private group, private people, and private donors. If the Post wants to track down those involved and get their story, that's fine. But the government shouldn't be helping a newspaper get a story on a private organization simply because that organization was required to give information to the government.

How would you like it if the Post decided to take you down, and was able to get the details of phone conversations you had with an IRS auditor that you had to talk to because of some question on your taxes? This leak was the same type of leak as that. We have rules to keep the IRS from telling people about your taxes, but they are the same rules that protected this group from having FEC lawyers talk to the post about their deposition.

The law is meaningless if it isn't enforced. But I rest assured that nobody will lift a finger to find out who leaked this information. Because the leftists want to see Abramoff and the republicans go down, and they will see this leak as helpful to their cause.