To the many loyal readers, bold advertisers and courageous stores that host newsstands where this newspaper is sold; to the few political leaders of Southern Maryland who all have supported ST. MARYS’TODAY in many ways, the cause of freedom of the press in the United States of America is bolstered due to your individual and group determination, strength of spirit and dedication to our Constitution.

The Maryland, D.C. Delaware Press Association; the law firm of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, especially attorneys Ashley Kissinger, Audrey Critchley, Seth Berlin; attorney Alice Neff Lucan; the Fourth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals; the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick; Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post and ABC News all have acted to advocate your right to read the newspaper of your choice.

They are modern defenders of the Constitution framed by our Founding Fathers.

For those of little sense who applauded the illegal and unconstitutional acts of cowards who, in the dark of night, perpetrated the removal of nearly all of that day’s edition of this newspaper on Election Day, 1998, in order to prevent our readers from reading critical news stories of two candidates the court process is now final.

For those who truly want law enforcement officials deciding what you can read, go somewhere else to enact your police state, but this is America and the law of the land says to keep your hands off our rights.

We shall be the only ones who determine what we read and what we think of what we read. We don’t need law enforcement bullies slinking around intimidating clerks working the lonely night shift in stores having a gang of beefy cops demanding to clean out entire stacks of newspapers.

This was hardly a caper, it was instead a gutless and costly attack on the fundamental rights of all Americans and all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, these rights have been upheld.

While those who carried out this oppressive activity, which the Court of Appeals ruled was in violation of the Ku Klan Act, dating back to 1871, the so-called county fathers and mothers sat on their hands.

Not once did any county commissioner who was in office on election day in 1998 (except Larry Jarboe), or who was elected that day and served for four years; or was elected in 2002 (except Larry Jarboe) ever made a public statement denouncing this mass removal of newspapers. Not once.

Instead, these commissioners permitted the continued expenditure of taxpayer money to defend the actions of those after they were ruled by the courts to be guilty of violating the constitutional rights of us all. Many hundreds of thousands dollars have been spent to defend and settle the federal lawsuit brought by this newspaper to defend our right to publish and your right to read.

All through this time, the St. Mary’s County annual premium to the Local Government Insurance Trust (LGIT) has tripled to now being close to a million dollars a year.
Many citizens are questioning whether settling this case could have been accomplished very early on at very little cost, and are wondering if the county commissioners and their insurance carrier dug in their heels and dug into your pockets needlessly.

While those morons running our county have seen fit to stick their hands in their pockets and smirk as this newspaper, which is often critical of their mishandling of county affairs, struggled to defend its rights, they stuck their hands deeper into the pockets of the taxpayers to pay for the antics of those involved in the action.

The raid of the newsstands was the work of cowards, the county commissioners’ failure to condemn the raid was another act of cowards. Paying to defend cowards was cowardly. Failing to apologize was cowardly. For Sheriff Zylak, failing to appropriately discipline those involved, following the Court of Appeals ruling, was gutless.

Capers often are the work of high school students, but in this caper case the acts were serious, carried out by lawmen with badges and guns. Therefore it was no caper.