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BIVENS: Spotlight on Montgomery County 

Being fined for smoking at home would, at least, be of-a-piece with the national spirit these days. Every week the federal government brings in more state secrecy and expands arbitrary state police power. Attorney General John Ashcroft has decreed that law officers can now eavesdrop on conversations between lawyers and clients and has called for rounding up 5,000 immigrants who fit "a set of generic parameters" (?) -- a plan so dim and desperate sounding that local police chiefs are muttering in rebellion. . .

So maybe there's a bright side to this don't-smoke-at-home nonsense. Often it's the local injustices that raise our ire. As word gets out about this one, perhaps it will remind us why Americans are suspicious of unchecked, unchallenged leadership. Not for nothing have we spent centuries of energy and passion trying to control government -- because the alternative is to have it control us instead.

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