Peter Scheer

Fortunately, the California Legislature didn’t have a hand in crafting the federal Freedom of Information Act. If it had, the American people would have been denied the primary source material for a large chunk of recent American history.Much of what we know about the major themes of US political history during the 35 years following World War II comes from the investigative files of the FBI. From the anti-Communist witch hunts of the 40s and

Here is FAC’s letter to the Governor, urging his veto of SB 1300:   Dear Governor Brown, On behalf of the First Amendment Coalition (FAC), I am writing to request your veto—or, alternatively, a qualified signing–of Senate Bill 1300, which requires oil companies to file reports on scheduled shutdowns, typically for maintenance, of their refinery facilities. We have no objection to the bill’s substantive regulatory requirements. However, we object strongly to procedural requirements that will

If you were trying to sabotage California’s open records law, you couldn’t do much better than SB 1300, a bill that has been approved by the Legislature and is now on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk, awaiting his signature. Tell him that if he cares at all about the Public Records Act and making government transparent and accountable, he should veto SB 1300. Ostensibly a bill to strengthen safety regulation of oil refineries, SB 1300, introduced

To its credit, the Obama administration was quick and forceful in its condemnation of the Afghan government’s expulsion of New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg, who had angered the Karzai government by reporting that high-level Afghan officials were considering bypassing electoral procedures to establish an interim government—in effect, to stage a coup. But the United States’ full-throated support of journalistic independence abroad may be unconvincing to at least one journalist at home. I’m referring to