EXCERPT:
The publisher of a small weekly newspaper in Georgia was indicted last week for filing an open records request with a local court, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. The story Mark Thomason was going after with his request is almost as strange as the fact that he was charged with a felony and jailed overnight after filing it.
Thomason, the publisher of Fannin Focus, was arrested and charged with making a false statement in his request and with attempted identity fraud and identity fraud, a felony. Russell Stookey, his attorney, was also charged with identity fraud. Brenda Weaver, chief judge of the local superior court, was “incensed” by Thomason’s request, and asked the district attorney for the indictments. The two men were jailed overnight and released on $10,000 bond, with trial upcoming.
Public records requests, sometimes referred to as FOIA requests, are one of the most useful and necessary tools in the arsenal of any reporter who covers the government. The laws in all 50 states and the federal government provide some mechanism for filing them. The implications of sending a reporter to jail for using this perfectly legal reporting technique are pretty scary, and probably don’t need to be spelled out here.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE STORY
Posted in Uncategorized.
EXCERPT: On Wednesday, July 13, Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced legislation that, if passed, would reverse the nationwide ban on mountain biking in wilderness areas in favor of local decision making and permit the use of “small-scale motorized equipment or method of mechanical transport” in the maintenance of wilderness trails. It’s a big deal.
Click here to Read More!
Posted in Uncategorized.
EXCERPT: Bennu, which is around 500 metres in diameter at its equator and travels around the sun at 63,000mph, will pass between Earth and the moon in 2135…“That 2135 fly-by is going to tweak Bennu’s orbit, potentially putting it on course for the Earth later that century,” Dante Lauretta, professor of planetary science at Arizona University, told The Sunday Times.
Click Here to Read More!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasa-probe-asteroid-armageddon-bennu-space-a7164901.html
Posted in Uncategorized.
