• AOL News: Should companies be free to hide their misconduct?

• OMB Watch: Supreme Court nominee Kagan’s impact on transparency difficult to predict

• Associated Press: Delaware lawmakers approved FOIA Amendment

• San Francisco Chronicle: State Department releases countries who volunteered vessels and technologies for oil disaster clean-up

Have you stumbled across interesting FOI links? Feel free to share!

• The Virginian-Pilot: Norfolk auditor looking into official’s credit card use

After a brief hiatus, we’re back to provide  you with more FOIA goodness.

• USA TODAY: Inspectors find safety flaws where airline food is prepared

• The State Journal-Register (Ill.): There’s no reason to ‘rethink’ new Illinois FOIA

Happy start-to-the-week!

• The Press-Register (Ala.): Feds refuse to provide spill response plans for top oil companies drilling in Gulf

• The Toronto Star: Access to information not a constitutional right, Supreme Court of Canada rules

• The New American: Iceland to become ‘Journalism Haven’

Happy Friday, ladies and gentlemen!

A judge in Utah’s 3rd District Court granted The Salt Lake Tribune and other Utah media outlets access to the dashboard camera video of former Utah Senate Majority Leader Sheldon Killpack’s arrest on drunken driving charges. Killpack had been arrested days before the Legislature’s annual session began, and resigned his seat shortly afterwards. His blood-alcohol level tested above the legal limit for Utah.

While Killpack is arguing in court that the police had no grounds to pull him over, it was the Utah Department of Public Safety that refused to release the video, claiming it would deprive Killpack of a right to a fair trial. But Jeff Hunt, the attorney representing the media groups, said there were better ways to protect Killpack’s right to a fair trial.

Police routinely release dashboard video, and in this case there was a particular need to see this video. Killpack was a member of the Legislative leadership, and he reportedly had been at a fund-raiser for another legislator and had gone to a club with a former legislators who became a lobbyist. Given the political intrigue, releasing the video would allow the public to see that justice was being dispensed fairly, and that an influential Republican was not getting preferential treatment, or being treated more harshly because of who he was.

Read more here.

• The NY Times: Prying open India’s vast bureaucracy

• The Detroit Free Press: Woman to sue Detroit, A&E over use of flash grenade

• The Courier (Texas): Courier doesn’t have to release online posters’ names

• The Foundry: Does FEMA know where its homeland security grants are being spent?

• The Guardian (U.K.): Fighting corruption in India – The dangerous life of a whistleblower

• The Washington Examiner: Bonus bonanza for federal workers

• Associated Press: Kennedy documents show death threats as late as 1985

• AnnArbor.com: University of Michigan settles Open Meetings Act lawsuit, pays $5,380 in legal fees to alumnus

• The Daily Herald (Ill.): Watchdogs say military phonies are on the rise

It’s that time again…Friday time!

• The State Journal-Register (Ill.): The city of Springfield ‘goofed’ after publishing private information online

• AnnArbor.com (Mich.): FOIA Friday – tracking trouble with a FOIA log

• Judicial Watch: FBI won’t release the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s “FBI file”

The New York Times is the latest to report disturbing news from the Gulf Coast — and we’re not just talking about the oil spill.

Reporters trying to cover one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history are finding themselves blocked by BP officials or government agencies — from the U.S. Coast Guard to local police departments — from seeing what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and where the oil is washing ashore.

The effort to control the press seems to be orchestrated, according to reports, by BP. For example, a CBS news crew was told to leave a beach by Coast Guard officers or risk arrest, the Coast Guardsman adding that it was “BP’s rules.” In another instance, a pilot who was going to take a news photographer over the spill area was denied permission to enter the airspace by a BP employee.

BP claims any restrictions are being done for safety reasons, and that it is allowing reporters into the area. But the reporters it is allowing in are essentially embeds who can only see what their BP minders will permit them to see.

BP’s moves may fly in England, which has a less-than-sterling record for press freedom, but it is wrong in America, where the press serves as a watchdog of both government and corporations. This is a disaster that will likely affect Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states for years to come, and there is interest in knowing how it happened, how badly are the states being affected and what exactly is being done to fix it. It is especially important in the context of the national debate over energy issues and whether we should be doing more offshore drilling for oil.

Journalists have a duty to go out and seek the answers on their own and hold those responsible for the disaster, both within BP and the government, accountable.