Blake’s Blog

My, my, my.

It looks like I need to update last week’s posting about Memphis City Atty. Elbert Jefferson and the state’s open meetings law.

Jefferson appeared before a state House of Representatives subcommittee earlier this month to lobby for more restrictive rules regarding the release of public records.

Jefferson told subcommittee members his office is bombarded with frivolous requests for records, including one calling for every police report that mentioned the words "ice cream."

It must have sounded pretty darned good when Jefferson laid it out like that. What he failed to tell the committee was that a media organization wanted those records to evaluate whether the city was doing enough to prevent convicted sexual predators from getting jobs driving ice cream trucks.

Maybe not so frivolous a request, after all.

Of course, being the good lawyer that he is, Jefferson must know what courtroom attorneys sometimes tell juries: If a witness is found to have given misleading or inaccurate testimony in one area, it’s fair to question the credibility of testimony given in other areas, too.

Jefferson should be experiencing an ice cream headache right now...