Photo by JH

With politicians like these, who needs enemies? Florida State Senator Jim Norman is doing a pretty good job on his own of taking away Americans’ everyday liberties — funny, how we’re always blaming foreigners for that, right?

Norman, a Republican from Tampa, has introduced a measure making it illegal to photograph farms. But wait, not just illegal — a pretty serious crime.  Under the “Farms” bill, it would be a felony to photograph or take video of a farm or its animals without the owner’s permission.

Creative Loafing did a little digging and found out Norman’s true motivation for this ridiculous bill: his connections to Big Agriculture. Of course! It always leads back to “Big” something.

The not-so-obvious purpose of this bill is to prevent people from obtaining employment inside a farm operation for the purpose of photographically documenting what they believe to be abuses of farm animals or violations of laws governing agricultural operations. Mr Cadle identified one of the groups they were trying to stymie as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). He said that there are many groups/individuals that try to record things and then expose them on the web.

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When BIG money speaks, Jim listens. And next thing you know, special interest laws get written and we lose a little sunshine.