People may or may not know that some legislators in the state of Ohio are currently attempting to have an
Ohio PATRIOT Act passed. I have been actively organizing and providing information against it through a
website and in two talks given in Ohio.
When I looked at the site today, about 14:30 est, I noticed something a little odd. The picture of the Senator who introuced the bill was gone, replaced by a 0x0 pixel. Odd I thought. So I went and looked and sure enough, someone had changed the name of the file on the Senate's website. It was
"J. Jacobson_small.jpg" but suddenly now it was called "s_06_small.jpg" on the Senate webpage, and in a totally different folder than before.
So I thought to myself, hummm, is someone watching or did the picture just happen to change it's server name and location in the last week? You tell me...
Senate Bill 9, as it is officially called, was introduced in late January by Republican Senator
Jeff Jacobson from Dayton, amended on a tuesday in Committee and passed on a Wednesday in the full Senate with twice as many pages as before. Sounds familiar, doesn't it.
The bill is currently in the House Committee on Transportation, Public Safety and Homeland Security, but there have not been any hearings yet.
There are still some serious concerns with the bill, particularly on its attempt to create a new category of terrorism, ecological and animal. It's a classic example of corporate interests that are ghostwriting public law to protect their profits.
To learn more visit the Ohio PATRIOT Act site. You can also send a web letter to the committee chairs and get specific details and concerns there too. Check it out.
That's the latest from the Ohio front.
cheers