Local blogger Keith Brown is working hard to get protest petitions reinstated for Greensboro. Protest petitions give citizens a bit more power in the zoning process, and Greensboro is the only city in North Carolina that doesn’t allow them as an option. Check out Keith’s site, Protest Petition for Greensboro North Carolina for lots more info.

The gist of Joe’s argument (but be sure to read his post and the comments) seems to be that since religious right groups get criticized for trying to entangle church and state, the Pulpit Forum should be criticized here in this case. In the comments, Joel Gillespie reiterates one of Joe’s claims, that liberal religious groups are not held to the same standard as conservative groups with regard to the separation of church and state.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that this is true, and that “religious left” groups don’t get as much scrutiny on church/state issues as religious right groups. That still doesn’t make this an issue where there *should be* scrutiny on church/state grounds.

At this point, all we know is that the group is presenting a claim about how certain records were destroyed. As of right now, this has nothing to do with a religious viewpoint at all.

Compare this to some of the things the religious right has done – rallies calling for mandating prayer in schools, the teaching of creationism, and openly talking about putting God in our government. In what way does that compare to presenting a claim about the destruction of evidence in an investigation? The first group of items is entirely based on religious doctrine. The second has no relation to any religious doctrine.

If the Pulpit Forum petitioned the government to put a traffic light up at a dangerous intersection, would that be asking for a violation of church and state? Certainly not (though Joe might try to convince us that it was), but this issue has far more in common with that situation than with some of the actions of the religious right.

Guarino’s argument essentially is that if any religious group has ever received criticism on a church/state issue, then no religious group should escape criticism in that area, regardless of the nature of their actions. My point is that it’s ridiculous to not look at the actual actions involved. Taking his stance to an extreme, but logical conclusion, we should be criticizing liberal pastors for voting in elections because some religious right pastors have received criticism for calling for gays, adulterers and blasphemers to be executed. Not all actions are equivalent, as much as he seems to want to lump them together.

Joe keeps insisting that the situations are similar and has claimed that this is a “major breach”. The problem for his argument is that he hasn’t shown any similarities or demonstrated that it’s a major breach, let alone any breach at all.

It’s a classic tale of longing, rejection, and fulfillment. You know: Reporter requests document. City denies the existence of the document. Local blogger posts the document. City suddenly finds the document.

This cartoon didn’t end up running in the paper this week. Unfortunately, the timing was off – the whole incident happened over a Wednesday and a Thursday. Since I turn in my final cartoon by Thursday mornings, I wasn’t able to submit the cartoon until this past week. Allen Johnson, the Opinion page editor at the News and Record, liked the cartoon but felt that the story would be a little stale by this point.

I can understand that – since my cartoons would only run on Sundays, there were quite a few times when there was a bit of a lag between my cartoon and the event I was addressing. This one happened to be on the far outer edge of that lag. I still think the underlying issue – the competence and credibility (or lack thereof) of city leadership – is very much in play, so I’m posting the cartoon here anyway.

On another note: When I spoke with Allen at the end of last week, he let me know that due to budget considerations at the paper, they’ll no longer be running my cartoons. When I saw this post at David Hoggard’s blog, I figured this would be coming. It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed working with Allen and seeing my cartoons in the paper. I’ll still be posting them here from time to time though. Allen did give me the option to run one final cartoon; I haven’t decided if I’ll take advantage of that or not. If something jumps out at me over the next day or two, I may, otherwise probably not.

Finally, there’s a cameo appearance in this week’s cartoon. One of the folks in there trying to help the city search for some shred of credibility is a local Greensboro blogger who’s been a bit more sympathetic to city leaders over the past week and a half than most. Meaningless bonus points to the first person who can correctly identify him (and points off for my characituring skills if no one gets this).

Ryan: Does City Hall have a communications problem?

Mitchell: “Um… Well, Um… I think based on, based on what… I would say yes. We have not been effective getting a message out and communicating the environment in which we have to work. We constantly hear that we could release information but I also hear from attorneys that I respect that without going through the proper process that it could be breaking the law. You have to understand that if I go against clear advice from a lawyer and in fact I end up breaking the law then I become personally liable.”

Now, I think that Johnson has done a pretty poor job at handling many aspects of the Wray fiasco. But this is a valid point, to an extent. What makes it even more interesting are some revelations from a recent post at The Conservative Alternative, where Sam Spagnola describes events at last night’s town forum with Greensboro Mayor Yvonne Johnson.

Spagnola points out that the forum was moderated by Marsh Prause, an attorney from Smith Moore, the lawfirm that represents the City on recent documents requests that he, Roch Smith Jr. and Joe Guarino are getting the run around on. He goes on to describe what happened when he submitted a question about the RMA report:

I handed my question to the lady who was accepting such things, and I watched as she walked it up to Prause. I watched him read it with a somewhat puzzled look. I watched him put the card down on the table next to him along with the other questions.

We waited and waited. Finally, there was ten minutes left and Prause said that there was enough time to answer all of the questions that had been submitted. Great, I thought. Maybe I’m not getting snowed.

But I was wrong. Eight and one half minutes later, Prause declared that all of the questions submitted had been answered. Cara and I and a few others said “no they haven’t”, but Prause ended the meeting anyway.

So extremely pissed off at apparently being lied to, I immediately approached Prause as people began milling around and told him “you said you asked all of the questions that had been submitted, but you didn’t ask mine.” He said something to the effect that he did ask all of the questions. I said “No, you didn’t. I asked a specific question about the RMA, and you didn’t ask it. I know you received it because I watched them hand it to you and I watched you read it.” He again said something along the lines of having categorized the questions and again saying he asked them all.

If Mitch is indeed following the advice of city lawyers, this makes me wonder if the root of much of the Wray/RMA circus is due to an overprotective legal team. If we could go back two or three years, and replace them with lawyers who don’t try to obstruct the release of documents by pulling stunts like claiming Gardner-Garrity applies when it really doesn’t, would we prevent many of the issues we’ve seen?

Maybe Mitch’s first order of business should be to start getting some second opinions in the legal realm.

Our government and system of justice puts the burden of proof on the government, not the accused. If Johnson has a case, it is up to him to prove it. Wray doesn’t have to prove his innocence, although I believe for the most part that he has.

A resolute society holds the government accountable.

True and inspiring words. However, I can’t help wishing that some of these same folks who are (rightly) demanding transparency and accountability from our local government would hold our federal government to the same standard.

A little sports related humor this week.

I’d also like to apologize for the recent neglect of my bloggerly duties – a few side projects and a very busy end-of-the-year have precluded regular updates here, but I’ll be back.