In Montana, anyone can walk into the state Capitol and sit in on any meeting, press conference or other gathering, thanks to our state's Open Meeting Law. You literally can sit in on everything. You want to watch the Democratic Senate caucus meeting? Go right ahead. You want to take notes on the Republican House caucus meeting? Totally fine. It is the ultimate in transparent democracy: anyone - reporter, citizen, activist, anyone - can see their government at work. The same cannot be said of the U.S. Capitol - and not because of any security concerns, but because there are certain people who have a very vested interest in preventing the public from seeing what's going on.
This is the underlying subject of a highly irresponsible, yet laugh-out-loud funny article on the Washington Post's website that features yours truly. If you can get past the misleading and the high school-ish snark, it becomes obvious that what we have here is a Beltway press corps that is reacting to its declining relevance by pulling its last remaining levers of official power in order to preserve a own monopoly over what should be public information.
To see exactly what I'm talking about, go to Working for Change.