Alan Dershowitz has never struck me as a particularly likeable sort. I kinda figured a lot of it was because of the settings in which I saw him in. But he's sorta short, and his hair is wiry, and he doesn't have a particularly friendly face.

You have to be pretty unpopular to need the Bill of Rights. If everybody loves you, you can pretty much do whatever you want to do. If you're a bunch of nazis trying to hold a parade in Skokie, people get upset - and that's when Alan Dershowitz ends up on CNN, explaining to us all that free speech is free only if unpopular speech is free. And pretty consistantly, Alan Dershowitz shows up at those times. He's a liberal, and I'm a conservative, but doggonit, the Bill of Rights isn't partisan, it's bedrock values for our nation, so if he's defending the Constitution, he's a hero to me.

Even if I wouldn't want him over to supper. I don't want anyone without a friendly face to supper.

Finding Jefferson is an odd book, in a way. Dershowitz spends the first half of the book explaining how he found this lost letter written by Jefferson, and the second half explaining how Jefferson is wrong.

Long story short? He found the letter because he walked into a bookstore where he is known, and they offered to sell the letter to him. Oh, wow. You need to spend 96 pages on that?

And it turns out that the letter wasn't really lost. Back before they had xerox machines, or even carbon paper, they made copies of correspondence by dampening a sheet of very thin paper, and placing it atop the original, then pressing the two together. A certain amount of ink would offset to the very thin paper, and by shining a light through the paper, you could read the words from the other side. A copy of the letter existed; it was only the original that was missing.

Dershowitz spends a lot of time arguing with Jefferson. Jefferson says an expressed opinion can never constitute an overt act? Dershowitz says that inciting to riot is an overt act.

Jefferson says if conscience is the umpire, then each judge's conscience will govern. Dershowitz says that job of a judge is to judge.

Jefferson says we have nothing to fear from the demoralizing reasonings of some, if others are left free to demonstrate their errors. Dershowitz argues that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. (He credits Winston Churchill for that observation, although Mark Twain said the same thing decades earlier.)

Jefferson says the law stands ready to punish the first criminal act produced by the false reasoning. Dershowitz argues that since speechifying is an act, it's hard to decide which act is the first one punishable. He points out that some crimes, such as treason, are only punishable if they fail, for if treason succeeds, the new administration is going to call it an act of patriotism to the new government, not an act against the overthrown government. Similarly, it is difficult to punish a suicide bomber, because he's already dead.

In the end, I found this book rather dissatisfying. The tag line on the cover is "A Lost Letter, A Remarkable Discovery, and the First Amendment in an Age of Terrorism". The letter was never lost, the discovery was not particularly remarkable, and terrorism existed long before the first amendment was enacted.

I remember, when I was in school, tests in which I was asked to write a 1250 word essay on a subjects about which I knew next to nothing. The essays were, of necessity, the written equivalent of hemming and hawing. This book reminds me of those essays. Dershowitz has enough matter here to justify a letter to the editor of 250 words, or perhaps a short op-ed piece of 800 words. The rest of the book is sawdust, filler, fluff.

When Kennedy was assassinated, experts said that if someone was willing to trade his life for the president's and was sufficiently determined, the secret service couldn't prevent it from happening. It occurs to me that the same rule applies to nations. If someone is sufficiently determined, they can kill numerous people, and there's not much we can do about it. Are we safe from another bombing like Timothy McVeigh pulled off? Not in the slightest.

While it's more difficult today to obtain the materials for an ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate, Fuel Oil) bomb, there are other easily-obtainable explosives. Apartment buildings have been accidentally blown up as flour dust goes down the disposal chute; an aerosol of almost any dust is explosive. You can sabotage bridges, poison drinking water systems, set fire to occupied buildings. The football stadium in Columbus has 80,000 seats. What if you contaminated the water supply, right before the SRO Ohio State - Michigan game, so that anyone who drank a Coke ended up with cholera or meningitis?

The late John W. Campbell suggested that the Old West was, of necessity, a more polite society, because when everybody was wearing a revolver on his belt, rudeness was highly dangerous. Well, not everybody is armed today, but enough of them are. It would be wise for the United States to dust off Herbert Hoover's Good Neighbor Policy, and start treating other countries and their citizens as if they were deserving of respect. After all, they're god's children, too - and they're armed.

I note that the used copies of this book are selling for almost as much as new copies. You could buy a copy of the book, read it at your leisure, then resell it to recoup almost all that you paid.