Quote of the Day

With newspapers struggling, both financially and in living up to their responsibilities with respect to democracy, it's worth remembering these words from John Peter Zenger (1697-1746), the colonial printer whose trial helped establish the principle of "freedom of the press." I couldn't find a picture of Zenger, but here's a copy of the paper he published in which he criticized the governor of New York, leading to a charge of libel (a charge of which he was acquitted):

"The loss of liberty in general would soon
follow the suppression of the liberty of the
press; for it is an essential branch of liberty,
so perhaps it is the best preservative of the whole."