Did the Journal’s editorial department and the readers of the Journal not read about the First Amendment violation which Leonard Pitts Jr. reported on in his Monday column? Inasmuch as I have not read one printed word about this “homeland security incident in our local papers,” I have to say that I am dismayed and alarmed. Benjamin Franklin warned us that, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Leonard Pitts Jr., columnist for the Miami Herald, and regularly featured in the Journal’s Your Opinion page, reported a February 9th County Homeland Security incident in a Montgomery County Public Library. It seems that two Homeland Security officers in uniform entered the Little Falls branch of the county library and informed the patrons that it was forbidden to use the library’s computers to view Internet pornography.
It was later reported by the Gazette.Net, Maryland County Newspaper Online, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2006, when confronted by the library staff and informed that they themselves were acting in violation of Montgomery County Public Library policy “the veteran officers continued to press their case.” Fortunately the library staff then called the police and the unwelcome intruders left.
The Gazette quoted County Councilman Michael J. Knapp, who heads the council’s Homeland Security Committee, “It was probably a good learning experience for everybody.” The Gazette also reported that Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, after learning of the incident, as calling “the guards’ actions highly inappropriate, unauthorized and in violation of county policy.” The county has since reprimanded and reassigned the guards.
Mr. Pitts reminded his readers that this incident did not happen in China, Cuba or North Korea. It happened “right here in freedom’s land.” He went on to say that he was appalled that “an agent of the government literally read over a man’s shoulder, Big Brother like, and tried to prevent him form seeing what he had chosen to see.” Pitts then went on to fully express my own exact reactions to this incident. Mainly, the fact that we are at war doesn’t make this OK, nor the fact that the library material involved was unsavory doesn’t make it OK.
When I read Pitts’ story, a chill went down my back. I am flabbergasted that I have not read or heard another word about this incident. If this incident is not an early warning signal, a clear harbinger of what is to come, I don’t know what is. If the local press in liberal Madison ignores this incident and chooses to treat it as simply a pornography story, or because the “homeland security officers” were later duly reprimanded, I believe the American people are in deep, deep denial.
The question that we should all be asking right now is, What conditions now exist in our “land of the free,” that would allow such Gestapo-like behavior to happen? What was the current context in which this incident occurred? Time magazine recently reported, “The President’s secret directive to let the NSA snoop without warrants sets off a furor.” US citizens being detained without charges, counsel or recourse, and illegal eavesdropping now being accepted by the American people as OK now that we are at war…
What will it take before Americans wake up? Now we are only being watched by big brother as we use our libraries. Will we soon need government approval to use our libraries, or to take a trip or watch a movie? Wake up America!
