Big scoop: a redstate.com blogger named Caleb Howe (a.k.a. “absentee”) happened to be sitting in an airplane seat behind former National Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Don Fowler and Congressman John Spratt of South Carolina. Since his sense of ethics is also an “absentee,” Howe dutifully eavesdropped on their conversation, which contained some derogatory comments about Gov. Palin and McCain’s choice of her as V.P., and then used his cell phone to video-record more inflammatory remarks, which he later posted on the redstate website. Matt Drudge, no stickler for ethics he, put up a link on The Drudge Report.

No American should have to fear that a private conversation on a train, plane, bus or in the public square is going to be surreptitiously listened to and recorded by third parties for any purpose, unless it’s a wiretap properly approved by a judge. The United States isn’t Soviet Russia, but ethics-less creeps like Howe and others seem determined to make it as similar as possible. Fowler and Spratt have every right to express their private opinions to each other no matter how offensive the right-winger in the seat behind finds them. Howe had several legitimate choices: ask them to keep the volume down, put on earphones, ignore them (I fly a lot, and unless Foghorn Leghorn and Sam Kinneson Jr. are arguing in the seat ahead of you, you have to really try hard to follow what is being said), or argue with them regarding their opinions. Recording the conversation secretly and putting it on the web isn’t one of the ethical options. This violates the spirit, if not the letter (I’ll leave the resolution of this issue to others) of anti-wiretapping laws, and is ethically indefensible…mean, unfair, sneaky, an invasion of privacy and conduct that shows no consideration for the feelings of others. Howe, like the rest of his revolting ilk on both the Right and Left, has the undemocratic idea that a person having different ideas about national policies than he does has forfeited the human right to fair treatment. It is a few short steps from using the web to humiliate political adversaries by revealing comments never intended for public consumption, and simply beating up one’s adversaries, in the tradition of totalitarian parties. Both methods are cowardly and unfair attacks intended to achieve an advantage through inflicting personal harm rather than through logic, persuasion and results. Yes, taping is better. It still stinks.

By allowing the fruit of such tactics to appear under its URL, www.redstate ratifies and encourages more of the same. The site, Howe, and Matt Drudge owe Fowler and Spratt apologies. But being an ideologically intolerant jerk usually means never having to say you’re sorry, because an ideologically intolerant jerk on the other side will soon be along to do something rotten to you. So have at it, guys: you deserve each other. But one warning: anyone I catch trying to videotape me without my consent will have to find himself a new cell phone.