Department of Things I'm Glad to Hear but Would Rather Hear Said Right Here at Home, Where American Voters Are Listening

During a visit to Singapore last week, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said that some of the measures imposed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks—including racially based checks on foreign visitors to the United States—had been unfair.

Said Ridge: “America knows we cannot seek a double standard and America knows we get what we give. And so we must and will always be careful to respect people’s privacy, civil liberties, and reputations. To suggest there is a trade-off between security and individual freedoms—that we must discard one protection for the other—is a false choice. You do not defend liberty to forsake it.”

Ridge also said that regulations that arbitrarily turned away thousands of foreign students seeking to enter the United States had been wrong and damaging.

P.S. I wonder if this piece is by the same Mark Baker who used to work at the Globe bookstore in Prague?