I'm surprised the "County" has its own Homeland Security Department!

Tracy Johnson
Measurement Specialties, Inc. 

BT







NNNN


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Baier [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 2:28 PM
> To: HP3000 List; Johnson, Tracy
> Subject: OT: What will he do next?
> 
> 
> Not him directly but because of him.
> 
> http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?
> qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzOTcmZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTY4O
> DM5MDImeXJpcnk
> 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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