Not him directly but because of him.

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?
qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzOTcmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY4ODM5MDImeXJpcnk
3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2

'Sorry, you can't read that'   Tuesday, Feb 21, 2006 By LEONARD PITTS JR. 


"The enemies of freedom will be defeated." -- President George W. Bush, 2005
"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo, 1971

THE FOLLOWING happened in the United States of America on Feb. 9 of this 
year.

The scene is the Little Falls branch of the Montgomery County Public 
Library in Bethesda, Md. Business is going on as usual when two men in 
uniform stride into the main reading room and call for attention. Then they 
make an announcement: It is forbidden to use the library's computers to 
view Internet pornography.

As people are absorbing this, one of the men challenges a patron about a 
Web site he is visiting and asks the man to step outside. At this point, a 
librarian intervenes and calls the uniformed men aside. A police officer is 
summoned. The men leave. It turns out they are employees of the county's 
department of Homeland Security and were operating way outside their 
authority.

We are indebted to reporter Cameron W. Barr of The Washington Post for the 
account of this incident, which, I feel constrained to repeat, did not 
happen in China, Cuba or North Korea. Rather, it happened a few days ago in 
this country. Right here in freedom's land.

There are those of us who'd say the country has become less deserving of 
that sobriquet in recent years. They would point as evidence to the 
detention of U.S. citizens without charges, counsel or recourse, to laws 
empowering the government to check up on what you've been reading, to 
revelations of illegal eavesdropping.

And there are others who'd say, 'So what?' They're in the 51 percent, 
according to a recent Los Angles Times/Bloomberg poll, who say we should be 
ready to give up our freedoms in exchange for security.

Apparently, they are ignorant of what Benjamin Franklin said: "They that 
can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve 
neither liberty nor safety."

Apparently, they're also unversed in something candidate Bush said in 
1999: "There ought to be limits to freedom." Mind you, this nugget of 
wisdom wasn't dropped in a discussion of national security. Rather, it was 
the future president's reaction to a Web site that made fun of him.

Seven years later, he's clearly getting his wish. It chills me to know that 
doesn't chill more of us.

Indeed, of all the many things I cannot fathom about certain of my 
countrymen and women, their ability to be sanguine at the threatened 
abrogation of their rights is very near the top.

The only way I can explain it is that freedom -- the right to do, say, 
think, go, "live" as you please -- is so ingrained in our psyche, has been 
such a part of us for so long, that some are literally unable to imagine 
life without it. They seem fundamentally unable to visualize how 
drastically things would change without these freedoms they treat so 
cavalierly, what it would be like to need government approval to use the 
Internet, buy a firearm, take a trip, watch a movie or read these very 
words.

If that sounds alarmist, consider again the experience at Little Falls, 
where an agent of the government literally read over a man's shoulder, Big 
Brother like, and tried to prevent him from seeing what he had chosen to 
see.

I'm sorry, but the fact that we are at war doesn't make that OK. The fact 
that we are panicked doesn't make it OK. The allegation that the material 
is unsavory doesn't make it OK.

Look, freedom is a messy business. It is also a risky business. But it 
means nothing if we surrender it at every hint of messiness and risk. 
That's cowardly and it's un-American.

You'd think we'd have learned that lesson after the Sedition Act of 1918, 
the excesses of Joseph McCarthy, the surveillance of Martin Luther King. 
But apparently the lesson requires constant re-learning. And vigilance.

So thank you to the Little Falls library for having the guts to say, hell 
no.

Some things should never happen in freedom's land.

Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, writes 
for The Miami Herald. Contact him at [log in to unmask], or call toll-
free at 888-251-4407. Send comments about this article to [log in to unmask]

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