No headline

Friday night last, someone removed two of my front yard signs protesting oil and coal trains and deposited them flat on the yard across the street. He also removed a peace flag from the front porch and dropped it on the driveway. Let’s see: trespass, theft, destruction and littering. He didn’t show enough courtesy to leave literature or DVDs. In the past, most homes in the neighborhood received one or both of those items, except us. I feel much better now.

Back in the 1970s, I was an ACLU board member who voted with the unanimous decision to support the New American Nazi Party in its constitutional right to march peacefully in Skokie, Ill. Skokie was a famous, and infamous, Supreme Court decision in part because Skokie had a large Jewish population, including many Holocaust survivors. There were a number of Jews on the board, who had to make an awful decision based on the law and not on an emotional desire to shoot the fools.

I wish our local coward would knock on my door and ask permission to do what he did. I would deny him that privilege and then explain how he can make himself heard in a completely legal way. Otherwise, if I were to catch him (them) again in the act, I might make him wonder if I’m just a crazy, dangerous person myself.

LAWRENCE BLAKEY

Sandpoint