first off, for the most part, we like moon. so when we turned on his radio program at 9 (1500 gmt) this morning he was going on about house bill 23 by representative martiny.
moon was saying how this bill would make it a crime to threaten a public official with the intent of influencing his conduct in relation to his position, employment or official duty - in other words by talking negatively about a public official, publicly or broadcasting their voting records or even campaiging against a public official in effect could be interpreted as "threatning" in essence chilling free speech rights.
naturally we immediately went to the legislature's website to view this atrocity and we were surprised at what we found. it is already illegal to do those things moon was saying this bill would make illegal.
a cursory review of this bill shows that it removes the very provisions that moon was railing against.
we immediately sent an email off to representative martiny and then went a step farther and phoned his office at metairie and talked to a secretary there she said that they had several phone calls about it already she asked if we had the call in number to moon's show so we gave it to her (1800-259-1440). a few minutes later representative martiny called in to talk to moon, however, he didnt really do a very good job (in our opinion) of explaining his bill, he even said that it was drawn up by a lawyer in his office at the behest of "judge drew" a search of the louisiana state bar website only returns one judge drew - 2nd circuit court of appeal judge r harmon drew.
in our opinion house bill 23 should be supported and passed into law.
rep martiny call into moon griffons radio show is here.
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tags: moon griffon Daniel R. Martiny house bill 23 talk radio louisiana legislature
