France Moves to Suppress Civil Rights, Free Press

I don't need another reason to distrust the French government, but here's one that enters my list of reasons near the top.

"The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday." Full story... This from the nation that gave us the Statue of Liberty. Of course, they also invented the Maginot Line and pate de foie gras. Here is personal account of French-like anti-press actions right here in Chicago, from local guy Francis Scudellari: Over the past couple months, on two separate occasions, I've been prevented from recording public meetings here in Chicago because I didn't have press "credentials." I don't know what US or Illinois law says specifically about this, but it raises some interesting quesitons if it is actually legal to prohibit the public from performing acts of witness. What justification can there be for this except to limit coverage to those who are in some sense "state sanctioned"? More...