Bernie Huebner Response to BDN 4/29-30 editorial


Dear Editors:


  On January 19, the day after the BDN carried news of Suzanne
Malis-Andersen's courageous refusal to be fingerprinted, your lead
editorial gave many of us heart.  I am quoting you:


  "Malis-Andersen is right to question the fundamental justifications
behind [the law]...."

  "The issue is markedly deeper than a few or even several dollars."

  "Too many human tragedies have been built on hysteria and seemingly
well-intentioned measures that eroded basic civil rights, bit by bit."

  "As Malis-Andersen notes, such seemingly innocuous invasions in basic
liberties tend to grow."

  "The objection to state policy is not about the money....  It is about
assuming the worst and presuming guilt."


  Now, fourteen weeks later and only days after Governor King's
outrageously irresponsible veto of the hard-fought attempt to at least
moderate the law, you seem to have forgotten already what you once so
forcefully agreed the fight was all about.  Your April 29-30 lead editorial
seems almost addled in its apparent unawareness of what you said in
January.  Again I quote:


  "Background checks and fingerprinting are not a civil liberties issue and
they are not an accusation of wrongdoing."

  "The fingerprint law remains on the books and remains an unnecessary
hassle for 99.9 percent of school personnel."

  "Don't leave now over the clumsy handling of the fingerprint law."


  "UNNECESSARY HASSLE"?  "CLUMSY HANDLING"?  Did the January editors take
new jobs somewhere?  Did the Blethen papers just buy the BDN?


  Do not even you understand that 54 teachers have refused to be
fingerprinted, not as a political bluff, not as some bold tactic, but
because they have no other moral choice? That two of the very principles
upon which this country was founded--presumed innocence, freedom from
unreasonable search and seizure without just cause or suspicion--are under
stealthy assault by those who claim hysterically that we must give up these
same freedoms for some incalculably small and false sense of security?


  "Stay," you say to us, "if for no other reason, than to show a sense of
priorities the state has yet to learn."


  We have already shown anybody willing to look.  And we are truly grateful
for your help in the effort.  But we cannot stay.  We CANNOT be
fingerprinted because to submit to an unjust law, as history teaches us, is
to commit democratic suicide.


  Neither can we override an ignorant and arrogant governor's veto, and
sadly the Legislature will not do so.  But you, as editors, can override
your own lapse of memory and commitment to our constitutional rights, and
repeal "Getting Back to Class."


  We urge you to do so.