News & Opinion

The House select committee on the January 6 insurrection is investigating a seven plus hour gap between then President Donald Trump’s phone calls during the attack on the Capitol. (msn.com, March 29, 2022, by Alison Durkee of Forbes) The committee is now trying to find out if Trump used back channels, the phones of aides or disposable phones. They are also concerned there was a coverup of the records from January 6. (The Washington Post,

Even though there is no LGBTQ curriculum in Florida’s schools for kindergarten though grade three, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill forbidding instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for those grades. Called the “Don’t Say Gay” law, the measure prompted fears it would have a chilling effect on Florida classrooms. (The Associated Press, March 128, 2022, by Anthony Izaguirre) Walt Disney Company CEO called for the repeal of the law and said the

The U. S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that an elected public college official in Texas was not was not protected from censure through the First Amendment. The man’s colleagues on a community college board censured him for suing them, setting up robocalls against them and hiring an investigator to prove one didn’t live in the college district. Judge Neil Gorsuch wrote that a verbal censure was not a free speech violation, that in any case,

Republican-dominated state legislatures are introducing laws with criminal penalties for filming police.The lawmakers are ignoring the fact that in the last 25 years the first, third, fifth, seventh ninth and eleventh district federal appeals courts have upheld the right of citizens to film the police. (VICE, March 25, 2022, by Trone Dowd) An Arizona bill would prevent citizens from recording police within eight feet of an officer when the officer is engaging someone. (MSNBC, February

With news outlets and open government advocates sounding the alarm, California Assemblyman Marc Levine is introducing a law requiring state agencies to preserve records for two years. The Department of Insurance adopted a policy automatically deleting employees’ e-mails after 180 days, prompting a staff member to say that they needed the e-mails to retrieve old records of enforcement activities. (The Sacramento Bee, March 23, 2022, by Wes Venteicher) The department revoked the policy four weeks