The Best Republican in the World

We know you think we'll give this award to Ron Paul, but today it's Thomas E. Boney Jr., publisher of The Alamance News in Graham, N.C., who got himself arrested yesterday for refusing to leave a meeting of the Burlington-Alamance Airport Authority. Details in the W-S Journal here.

We like open meetings. Even more, we like newspaper publishers willing to go to jail to challenge the secretness of some government officials.

Boney is already well known for forcing the light of day onto elected servants of the people. In 2002, Boney was preemptively sued by the Burlington City Council in an attempt to prevent him from challenging one of their closed meetings. Boney eventually won that case in the North Carolina Supreme Court.