· A man is sentenced for firebombing a mosque in El Paso.
· A Koran is desecrated with human waste in Nashville.
· A bag stuffed with burned Korans is left in front of an Islamic center in Blacksburg, Va.
· A mosque is burned to the ground in Adelanto, Calif.
· An Islamic school is vandalized for the third time in Miami.
As my son Stephen, a former federal prosecutor, would remind me: There is a weakness in contrasting private acts of violence with government activity after Sept. 11, 2001, and during World War II. And, he would want you to know, there are several reasons why people held as material witnesses don't testify before grand juries -- some of which have to do their own decisions. Finally, he posits that some so-called legal analysis of government actions borders on the hysterical and biased. Granting all that, and I do, there is still ample reason to be concerned.
Frederick Douglass asked in the 1852 Fourth of July commemoration: "Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?"
In 2005 the question may be asked once more: Whose Fourth of July is it?
kingc@washpost.com
