When the little guy gets stepped on by government employees, we may think, "Cluck, cluck, tsk, tsk, poor little guy, well, you can't fight city hall, can you? Better dust yourself off, call it a day, chalk it up to experience, and get back to work." That is an old way of thinking. You can fight city hall. That's what the "Save the Bay" campaign was about five decades ago, and the refusal of San Franciscans to allow a freeway to pierce the heart of the city, which is why you have to take local surface roads to get to the Golden Gate Bridge from any freeway leading into the city.
Or you could sue, but that is like trying to bail the ocean a teaspoon at a time.
So it is with some interest when we see a powerful guy, a genuine big-shot, this time in the world of journalism, the editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, a man who political candidates court, unable to buy an airplane ticket because his name, John Diaz, is on the watch-list.
So get me off it, he says. Talk to the ticket agent, he's told. The ticket agent tells him to take it up with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. You can imagine where he's going to get with that cobbled together dog's breakfast of a federal agency. Take someone off the watch list? And let in a possible terrorist? Impossible!
Does Mr. Diaz sue?
Nah.
He writes an article and publishes it in his newspaper. After all, he runs the thing.
Maybe some good will come of it. Perhaps not any time soon, but he raises a serious constitutional issue. At what point does our government become a freedom destroying tyrant? When secret government replaces open democracy? When you can't complain and be heard? When you can't get redress from legitimate grievances?
You know what happens when you can't get redress of grievances, right?
See Thomas Jefferson and his fellow criminal conspirators.
The article is below.