Not allowed to criticize


Making a Federal case
This is a classic case of saying one thing and doing another.

I would have told Laura Berg that, until she came along, I hadn't heard the word sedition since journalism school. (John Peter Zenger was sooooo 1700s.)

I would have said that her experience with the big, bad wolf of government sounded like something out of Kafka - without the cockroach but maybe with a bug.

I would have asked her if the guys who took possession of her work computer not only peeped all around it, but maybe left a little something inside it. In a memo, her lawyers say, the VA said it suspected her of committing an act of sedition. Inciting us rabbling masses to rise up against our government could be just cause for planting a tracking device in the occasional Dell.

I would have said all of that and more, but these days, Berg isn't talking. Not after her employer of 15 years, the Veterans Affairs Hospital, took offense at a letter to the editor in which she sharply criticized the Bush administration.

In the letter, published in the Sept. 15 Weekly Alibi, she said she didn't care for his response to Hurricane Katrina victims. She didn't like his ballooning deficit. And, as a nurse who counsels returning vets, she feared for future generations of families scarred by their mother's or father's service-related disorders.

Half of America is complaining about the same stuff around the dinner table right now, but when a government worker exercises her free-speech rights, well, we're talking a federal case.

I'd say that someone over reacted.

The scary thing is that once something like this gets rolling, there is no government employee who is willing to take responsibility and put a stop to it.

And again, President Bush is in office now, but there were cases when Bill Clinton was President. It is a systematic problem.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sun - February 12, 2006 at 06:41 PM  Tag


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