Citizen’s Right to Know Under Attack in Illinois!
March 17, 2011 | Filed Under Democrats/Leftists, Ethics, Government, Government, Corruption, Illinois, Illinois State Government, Liberals, Senate, Warner Todd Huston | Comments Off
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Illinois Senate is currently debating SB1645 which would arbitrarily limit a citizen’s “right to know.” If a citizen asks more than fifteen questions per year under FOI rules (Freedom of Information Act Requests), the citizen’s requests would be characterized as a “vexatious” requests.
With this appellation applied, FOI requests can then be ignored.
Now, at first this may seem sensible in some way. After all, if Joe Blow from East Peoria keeps bombarding the state with FOI requests this might seem odd or troublesome. But what about journalists? What about public watchdog organizations? These folks are highly likely to be requesting many bits of public information. Are they to be shut down too?
Even still, so what if Joe Blow does ask for a bunch of FOIs? Isn’t it the right of a citizen to know what his government is doing?
So, what does the government have to hide? Further how arrogant of them to say that we, the people, are “vexing” them!
Please contact your legislator, click here and tell them to vote “NO” on SB1645.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
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