A Little Sunshine  by | July 2007  In September 2000, in Pine
Hill, New Jersey, Robert Taurus was escorted out of a council
meeting by the local police chief and issued a summons for
disorderly conduct. His offense: He wanted to videotape the
proceedings for his records.  Taurus wasn't exactly an impartial
observer: A longtime Democratic activist, he had grown
disenchanted with the council's Democratic majority over a
nepotism dispute, switched his registration to Republican, and
become the council's signature critic. He saw his video camera
as a deterrent to official misdeeds. "People act differently
when they're in front of the camera," Taurus explained. "They're
not as apt to do the sleazy stuff."  The mayor told a local
newspaper that the council couldn't permit "private people" to
film meetings. Then he added, in apparent contradiction, that if
Taurus were "a decent resident, we would have no problem."
There's no dispute that Taurus was fond of causing trouble.
Still, it was a bit of a stretch to descri