Bro. Jodie and the Supremes

Well, gentle readers, the royalty over in the Grand Duchy of Pulaski are at it again. I know all of us poor, stupid country folk here in the “outer dependencies” should just tip our hats, bow meekly and do what we’re told, but somehow that just isn’t in my nature.
First off, State Rep. Joseph K. Mahony, II of El Dorado (known to those who will admit to knowing him well as “Jodie”) is spear-heading yet another attack on your right to know what elected officials do in your name, and with your money. Seems like every time the legislature (a.k.a. The Good Ol’ Boys’ Malaprop and Debating Society) gets together, Bro. Jodie has some new idea for neutering the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
This trip, Bro. Jodie has lined up a whole passel of bills that would do a pretty good job of making sure you don’t know anything about what elected officials do until well after it’s too late to do anything about it. If enacted into law, these bills would so broadly and vaguely expand the legal right of elected bodies to meet, and act, behind closed doors, there wouldn’’t be much point in any members of the voting public showing up for a city council, quorum court, school board, conservation district or any other kind of meeting. Very little business would be done in the open; even votes on entering into contracts could be taken in private. And the news of what went on couldn’t be released until after the contract had taken effect.
And what makes Bro. Jodie so confident that this tangled mess of legislative flotsam and jetsam will make it to the governor’s desk? Why, he’s gonna make it possible for members of the media, including your humble correspondent, to sit in on these private meetings. Only thing is, reporters won’t be able to breathe a word of what they hear in those closed sessions until after what’s done is done and there ain’t no goin’ back.
Personally, I can’t decide what offends me more - Bro. Jodie’s apparent notion that reporters, including me, are so self-centered that we won’t mind if the people don’t know as long as we do, or his impression that the people who obey the laws and pay the bills are too dumb stupid to be given any say in what’s done with their tax money.
The FOIA isn’t my law, gentle readers, and it isn’t the media’s law. It’s yours. It has served you well, with very few modifications, since 1967. Other states have modeled their so-called “sunshine laws” after it.
I don’t know why Bro. Jodie keeps wanting to take an ax to it, but if he ever gets away with it, just as sure as the turning of the Earth, a whole lot of politicians will be able to get away with a whole lot more than they can now.
In another assault on rationality, the State Supreme Court decided that the law forbidding the verbal abuse of a school teacher was an unnecessary restriction on the Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech. The case revolved around a rather small matter; seems that a bright, young student (in a school district far removed from our humble bailiwick, thank goodness) called a teacher a name normally reserved to identify a female dog of breeding age.
Part of the ruling handed down by the members of our state’s highest court suggested that students don’t have to “check” their right to express themselves at the door when they enter a public school building. In general, I agree with this sentiment. However, I also agree with a sentiment expressed some decades ago by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a jurist of considerably more distinction than our Natural State Supremes. What ol’ Ollie’s suggestion boils down to is “My rights end where yours begin.”
No right-thinking parent or school district patron wants to inhibit the intellectual or emotional growth of a student. By the same token, part of that growing process is learning the fine art of self-control. Granted, some adults, including some teachers, have a tough time with that, and for all I know the teacher in question may, indeed, be a b***h.
But if young people, who aren’t capable of exercising the same level of self-restraint as a responsible adult, are given free rein to say whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want, it is hardly reasonable to expect them ever to develop that self-restraint.
At times, I get the impression that the Arkansas Supremes spend a shade too much time breathing the heady vapors of the upper strata of jurisprudence. Everybody needs a “reality check” now and then.