On Sunday, November 18, 2001, at 01:41 PM, Anonymous wrote: > Tim wrote: > >> The bomb instructions Joe provided are as accurate as most recipes in >> "The Anarchist Cookbook." >> >> (A book my local Sheriff's Department banned in 1970.) > > How did the Sheriff's Department manage to do this? >
After some street protests around then, the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department ordered the UCSB Bookstore to remove copies of the book. This is what the various local papers and bookstore management reported at the time. (Rummaging in my memory, I'm not sure if the ban was in 1970, '71, or '72. I remember it was big local news when the local bookstores were allowed to resume selling the book, and I bought my copy in the summer of '73. Still have it, in fact.) As in many cases of book banning, each new case requires an ACLU/etc. court battle. They ban a book, maybe the lawyers sue, probably the ban is lifted, but this doesn't stop the exact same thing from happening a year later or in another state. Were I a judge, I would say "What part of the First Amendment didn't you understand? I'm sentencing the Sheriff, his top 5 deputies, the City Manager, the Mayor, and the 7 members of the City Council who voted on this to a year in County Jail." Of course, this is not possible in America--other lawyers would jump in and claim the judge had exceeded his authorit and that mere violations of the First Amendment are not criminal matters. Which leaves suing the local government, but this is rarely effective (or even allowed) and the victims/taxpayers end up paying all of the costs. The bureaucrats and politicians just laugh. (One reason I came to the "kill those who violate the Constitution willfully" point of view is seeing these deaths of a thousand cuts, where the Supreme Court could rule in one case that something is not constitutional and then have that exact same behavior repeated one county over. "So sue us!" is what the violators say, knowing there will be no sanctions against _them_, personally, and that the court costs will be paid for by the victims. While I wouldn't advocate killing those particular sheriffs who forced bookstores to remove that particular book, the principle is sound. And there are plenty of cases that do justify killing violators.) --Tim May "How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?" --Alexander Solzhenitzyn, Gulag Archipelago
