TATTERED BUT TRIUMPHANT

The authorities wanted it. The bookstore owner concealed it.

Lawyers got involved. Judges were summoned to courtrooms. Briefs were filed.
Sidebars were had.

And taxpayers were billed for way too much.

It was all in a vain effort to unearth one of Denver's best-kept secrets,
held for more than three years by Joyce Meskis, owner of the Tattered Cover
bookstore, and her lawyer.

Exactly what book did suspected methamphetamine maker Chris Montoya buy from
her bookstore to create all the fuss?

A book on Japanese calligraphy, of course.

Let us be the first to say: When Japanese calligraphy is outlawed, only
outlaws will perform Japanese calligraphy.

Drug task force investigators, obviously, were chasing their own tails on
this one. Montoya's name apparently appeared on a Tattered Cover envelope
found outside a drug lab in an Adams County mobile home. Authorities also
had recovered two books nearby on how to manufacture methamphetamine.

They assumed - and we all know what trouble that gets us into - that Montoya
had purchased a "how-to" manual for making methamphetamine from the Tattered
Cover. The purchasing records could link him to the drug lab, they figured.

When investigators with the North Metro Drug Task Force demanded that the
bookstore hand over its purchasing records, Meskis balked. And rightly so.

The case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually sided
with Meskis.

We have applauded Meskis' resolve on this page before. Knowing now what she
was concealing, it would have been very easy for her to say: Look, it's a
calligraphy book.

But that could have set a nasty precedent of allowing the government to
stick its nose where it doesn't belong.

We understand that the North Metro Drug Task Force was trying to protect the
community. (Montoya, by the way, has since been convicted of an unrelated
drug crime.)

We're just happy that Meskis was equally committed to protecting our First
Amendment rights.