Hustler Publisher Larry Flynt Offering $1,000,000 Reward

Always the consumate business man, Larry Flynt offers a million dollar reward for anyone able to prove that they’ve had illicit sexual relations with a member of Congress. Talk about cost effectiveness, just imagine how much he’d have to pay out if the Republicans were still in the majority!

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Give Me MY Documents!

After doing an exhaustive and full disclosure to the government of my financial situation while filing my taxes today I asked myself why shouldn’t almost all documents and internal communications of our government be made publicly available? Many people who haven’t actually thought about the issue may initially scoff at the public availability of internal government documents but ask yourself why we accept that corporations have the right to access any memo or email created on a corporate asset but the attorney general for instance can claim that he doesn’t have to disclose communications created on assets that I bought a piece of today when I paid my taxes. Those documents aren’t his just because he created them €“ they’re mine!

Would releasing most governmental internal communications be detrimental to the national security of the U.S.? Would it disclose ongoing investigations or potentially put someone in harms way? Can Alberto Gonzales claim that the release of Department of Justice documents meet any of these standards? I think the answer is clearly and empathetically “NO! yet it seems to me that many people in our country accept needless secrecy in the government, a government by the way which works for and is paid by yours truly (and millions of my fellow citizens).

Isn’t the disclosure of the use of our government assets a more important consideration than whether or not a government official will be embarrassed, politically decapitated or outed for providing illegal advice, say for instance to the president? Shouldn’t the burden of proof lie with the government in order to allow them to keep documents or internal communications secretive? Shouldn’t these documents be presumed to be capable of public release unless otherwise shown to meet very narrow guidelines, like whether or not their release would jeopardize human life or national security, which by the way should be readily apparent to any rational judge? Shouldn’t these documents and communications also be made “readily available to all citizens so that we don’t have to make needless requests of OUR government to attain what’s already OURS?!?