Thou shalt not kill time in Waukegan

Swami:

Last month you called on the Waukegan City Council to get rid of public comment time, and instead they came up with some list of "commandments" to keep people in line. Since they didn't listen to you the first time, what's your alternate plan?

Ferme La Bouche

Monsieur:

The most disappointing thing about Waukegan's new "comment commandments" is that, even though they were clearly going for a Moses/Mount Sinai thing, they only came up with SEVEN commandments. If the mayor and alder-people were really looking to make a statement, they should have poured some strong coffee, pulled an all-nighter and cranked out three more commandments. Or just called them "the seven deadly sins" or something.

Let The Swami show you how easy this could have been. Here, off the top of Swami's turban, are three commandments they should have thrown on the tablets:

VIII: Thou shalt not put the senior alderman to sleep during your allotted three minutes.

IX: Thou shalt not forget to state your name and address before speaking. If you forget or otherwise fail to do so, you will be summarily wrestled to the ground, pepper-sprayed, handcuffed and thrown into a concrete cell that hasn't been mopped in weeks.

X: Thou shalt not express moral outrage over anything less than homicides, criminal abuse of authority, and/or bona fide civil rights violations. Everything else is a pet peeve and you should already know that no one else cares.

There you have it. If you're going to go ahead and do something like allow public comment, you might as well do it right.