Corzine Wants To Keep It a Secret

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and former state worker's union president Carla Katz, who dated before he became governor, have been fighting to keep the e-mails they exchanged during budget negotiations private since Tom Wilson, The Republican State Committee Chairman, and several news organizations, including The Associated Press, requested the correspondence.

A three-judge appeals panel reversed a lower court ruling that the e-mails be made public. The appeals court ruled that the release of the e-mails could have "a chilling effect the governor's ability or willingness to solicit advice, or to accept unsolicited advice in the future."

Personally, I think that since appellate court has upheld the principle that Corzine has been fighting for, he should release all the e-mails he exchanged with Katz to prove to the public that none of them influences the state worker contract negotiations last year.

Until he does, this issue will remain a cloud over his head, especially compared to the recent shifts for a more transparent government by Barack Obama.

Cartooning the Inauguration

For anyone that's going to the inauguration tomorrow to watch Barack Obama be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, keep an eye out for a chubby white guy with a sketchpad roaming around the crowds.

I'll be drawing and taking pictures for various newspapers, attempting to be a modern-day Shel Silverstein while hopefully not freezing to death. I'll be posting all my cartoon on my Cagle cartoons blog on Wednesday, located here.

Long before he became a world-famous children's-book author, Silverstein went to work for fellow Chicago native and cartoonist buddy Hugh Hefner at Playboy magazine.

Silverstein did several brilliant comic travelogues published by Playboy between 1957 and 1968, These pieces took Silverstein all across the world, from Scandinavia to Africa and the Middle East, from Paris and London to Moscow. He even did a two-part epic titled "Silverstein Among the Hippies."

So we'll see what I can do. I'll be in Washington on Monday and Tuesday talking to people and covering the festivities, and I'll return to Delaware on Wednesday to assemble what I was able to produce for various publications.

I'll post what I can when I can. So just check back on Wednesday to see what I came up with, good or bad. You can also follow me on twitter, where I'll be posting brief updates throughout the day. You can follow me here.

And don't worry. I've already been warned about the bathroom situation. In fact, that's where I'll be headed first.

There's lots of comedic potential in millions of people fighting over port-a-potties.