The secret ballot is one of our more cherished rights as U.S. citizens. We can freely cast a ballot for the candidate of our choosing without fear of retaliation. Until, that is, we support a candidate with more than our time and our vote. Once you decide to hand over your hard-earned dollars to a [...]

I’ve already written about how the proposed ethics initiative is a poor substitute for citizen action on ethics issues. It seems, though, that backers are intent on pushing through the proposal anyway and voters just may well sign off on it. In the interest of putting the best law forward, I’d like to suggest some [...]

In a responsible republic, citizens must be participatory in choosing and carefully watching their chosen leaders. Without the fear of retaliation from the governed, those leaders feel emboldened to abuse the public trust. When citizens let their guard down and a holder of elective office abuses the power given them, we should rightfully run them [...]

When I initially read that Rep. Kory Holdaway was resigning his seat in the legislature to become a full-time lobbyist for the UEA, I found myself thinking “great, another revolving door lobbyist.” I had fully anticipated some kind of blogging outrage at the revolving door especially in light of the current ethics initiative being proposed. [...]

After the legislature decided to do as close to nothing as possible about perceived ethics problems earlier this year, some citizens were left a bit steamed. There do appear to be a lot of conflicts of interest in the legislature (like a full-time lobbyist as a legislator) and while there have been some rather blatant [...]