A Quick and Easy Lesson

What are you doing right now? Just sitting around? You're not alone. The rest of the country is doing the same thing. Meanwhile, your ability to know what's happening in your life is being thrown out the window.

Example one. Don't you hate getting stuck in traffic jams? Isn't it nice to know when and where construction takes place, so you can avoid sitting in traffic? If the homeland security bill passes, your town won't be required to tell you where construction will take place.

If the construction involves- for instance- repairing a sewer main, the soon-to-be-passed homeland security bill allows cities to withhold such information for security purposes. Apparently, terrorists could use information about the location of your city's sewer main to attack you. Because of that, someday you'll end up sitting in a traffic jam for hours, without any way to avoid it.

Example two. Let's say your city has unsafe drinking water. You'd want to know about it, wouldn't you? If the homeland security bill passes, your city won't have to inform you of such things. City drinking water falls under public utilities, and information about public utilities might be used by terrorists to harm you. No joke.

Example three. You know how you grumble when you see the money taken out of your paycheck for taxes? It's a reporter's job to tell you what your city uses that money for. If you don't act fast, it will be very difficult for us to tell you what is being funded with your money.

Do you see where I'm going with this? The homeland security bill does one thing, and one thing only: it allows your town, whether a tiny townships or a large city, to withhold almost any piece of information for any reason.

The things I've mentioned here are just a few of the ways your life will get worse from the homeland security bill. The full list could run a good ten pages, but I'm keeping this short. Nobody wants to read long editorials about boring government bills, so I'm putting it clear and simple in 412 words.

So call, e-mail or send a letter to your state's senator, asking them not to pass the homeland security bill. If you don't know who your senator is, e-mail me and I'll give you all their contact information.

There, I'm done preaching. You can now go back to doing nothing. Have fun.