Enjoy your MLK Holiday

I know I can come across as overbearing and maybe a bit paranoid about government abuses, but, when reflecting on this holiday, take this excerpt of a post from Hit & Run into account:

This holiday is as good a time as any to remember how one of our greatest
Americans was bugged and harassed by a paranoid, power-mad J. Edgar Hoover, in
the name of National Security. From an L.A. Times op-ed today by former attorney general Nicholas deB. Katzenbach:

When Hoover asked for the wiretaps, Bobby consulted me (I was then his
deputy) and Burke Marshall, head of the Civil Rights Division. Both of us agreed
to the tap because we believed a refusal would lend credence to the allegation
of communist influence, while permitting the tap, we hoped, would demonstrate
the contrary. I think the decision was the right one, under the circumstances.
But that doesn't mean that the tap was right. King was suspected of no crime,
but the government invaded his privacy until I removed the tap two years later
when I became attorney general. It also invaded the privacy of every person he
talked to on that phone, not just [Stanley] Levinson.

Read the whole post and article. It makes me wonder if someone could affect the kind of national changes that King made today. Sadly, I'm not sure someone could.

Kid H.