WHO’S THE BIGGER ENEMY OF CIVIL LIBERTIES? John Ashcroft? Or Nick Kristof? Well, Stephen Green has his own opinion, which for the moment he’s allowed to express:

“Congress shall make no law…” except, of course, to suit the tastes of Nicholas Kristof.

Nick Kristof holds a powerful position at one of the world’s most powerful newspapers. His voice will never be silenced. But yours might be someday, if Kristof gets his wish.

Given the fuss people made regarding Ari Fleischer’s innocuous remark about people needing to watch what they say in time of war, no doubt this out-and-out call for censorship will be widely denounced by civil libertarians and the mainstream media. Right?

Or will this exercise of “Jackboot Liberalism” get a pass?

UPDATE: A reader writes:

Is Kristof unaware of the books on munitions handling and operation, security infiltration techniques, and silent killing methods that have been available for decades from any Army surplus store? I wonder if he would like to shut down the presses that educate our own military…

I also know from firsthand experience that the semi-underground ‘cookbooks’ he is so worried about are, and always have been:

a) easily available

b) DANGEROUS (primarily to the user)

My guess is that the majority of malefactors who follow such guides will end up killing only themselves. That such an op-ed would pop up now is nothing short of ignorant hysteria (or less charitably, a calculated power ploy). Enemies of the United States have always been around. So have how-to guides for aspiring criminals. But the only thing that ever blew up was my mother’s kitchen.

The fact that he equates his ability to purchase these poorly written books with his ability to make the substances they claim displays a deep ignorance of applied science at even the Chem 101 level. Which is, admittedly, not his area of expertise. But for a publisher, his apparent belief that the information today wasn’t availble less than a decade ago (for Aum Shinrikyo) is remarkably naive.

Indeed. Kristof seems a bit on the gullible side. I wonder who’s been feeding him this stuff.