No wonder Leslie Newell Peacock said in his lead paragraph, “[T]hanks to a state mandate.” A little gratitude would seem to be in order.

Peacock also (idiotically?) said: “Though he claims not to be inspired by religious activists, and though he is Jewish and not Catholic, Greenberg’s proposal would sit well with the Vatican, which in mid-December said its position is that in vitro fertilization is unethical and that babies should be conceived only through intercourse.” Not only is Greenberg not Catholic and is not inspired, he says, by religion, he also did not want to ban in vitro fertilization. He only, quite sensibly this lapsed Episcopalian thinks, thought the beneficiaries should bear the cost, not the rest of us.

If the shoe fits, where it.

I think the real problem here might be that Mr. Brantley and liberals in general fell that are more intelligent than conservatives and when dealing with Rep Greenberg he can plainly see that even he can’t pretend to be intellectually superior.

When trying to compensate for a deficiency Mr. Brantley maybe you should just but a 4×4 truck like Republicans do. You would look a lot less ridiculous doing that than challenging Rep Greenberg at every turn.

Please indulge my attempt at completing the original post.

Since legislators are among the select group who are entitled to seek opinions of the Attorney General of this great state, why not revise your law to have the citizen who files an FOI which is subsequently turned down to simply follow the following steps:

1. Submit a copy of their FOI, along with the answer provided by the agency or other governmental entity to which it was originally submitted to the citizen’s State Representative or State Senator, whichever they choose.

2. Said legislator reviews the request, attaches a cover letter, prepared by Legislative Staff as most other legislative letters are prepared, and sends the denied FOI onward to the Attorney General in the manner requests for opinions are requested today.

3. The Attorney General, or rather his minions, opine as to the supposed legality of the FOI request and return said opinion to the requesting legislator. Said legislator then notifies and provides copies of the opinion to both the citizen and the denying agency/entity.

4. Said legislator then mediates a resolution of the issue between the citizen and denying agency/entity. There still remains the possibliity that the denying agency/entity may refuse and wish to continue the FOI request denial through the court system.

There really is nothing liste above that deviates from the current system of requesting opinions from the Attorney General. It just never has been done with FOIA requests.

The positives are that more branches of government become involved. The inclusion of the legislative branch is that the knowledge of legislative impact upon FOIA is much more well known by legislators who might choose to direct legislative influence on the FOIA language. The legislators will now have first-hand-knowledge of what issues are out there regarding denials of FOI requests, number of requests denied, reasons, etc. Legislative staff can easily create a database, heck MSExcel would even work for this, to monitor and track the number of requests of this type to be forwarded through to the AG’s office.

Again, thank you for your patience with my inability to produce the initial posting.

1. Submit a copy of their FOI, along with the answer provided by the agency or other governmental entity to which it was originally submitted to the citizen’s State Representative or State Senator, whichever they choose.

2. Said legislator reviews the request, attaches a cover letter, prepared by Legislative Staff as most other legislative letters are prepared, and sends the denied FOI onward to the Attorney General in the manner requests for opinions are requested today.

3.