THORN: SHOW RECAPS FIRST AMENDMENT FIGHT

Previewing the PBS program Reading Your Rights the other night, I couldn't
help imagining its two protagonists as cowboys in an old-time Western. Cue
the ominous music, the hot sun beating down on the dusty street, the horses
whinnying nervously and pawing the ground.

Walking down Main Street, hands hovering just above her gun belt, ready to
draw: Joyce Meskis, owner of the Tattered Cover Book Store.

From the other direction, a glint in her eye and a badge on her chest:
police officer Lori Moriarity.

Though no one will shoot before the show is over, no one roll down the roof
of the saloon, jump onto the back of a horse and high-tail it out of town,
the excitement is still high-stakes.

Who will prevail? The renegade shop owner, packing the First Amendment? Or
the sheriff with the search warrant, looking to make the town safe for the
wide-eyed women and children?

The makers of Reading Your Rights, which airs at 8 p.m. Friday on
KRMA-Channel 6, are letting viewers decide for themselves who wears the
black hat and who the white in this recap of the First Amendment case that
made headlines a year ago. But that's a cop-out, I'm afraid.

At a time when First Amendment rights are under serious assault across the
country, this Western shootout should have come with a moral that hits you
over the head like an anvil. But more on that in a minute. Maybe you
remember the story:

Police officers, led by Moriarity, uncover a meth lab in a trailer in North
Denver. As they search the grounds, they find an empty mailing envelope
from the Tattered Cover in the trash, along with a name and an invoice
number. To make matters more intriguing, they find two books on the
premises: The Construction and Operation of Clandestine Laboratories and
Advanced Techniques of Clandestine Drug Laboratories.

If they can link a buyer to the books, it might help prove the identity of
the lab operators. The police win a search warrant, and the showdown begins.

The camera cuts from Meskis to Moriarity and others as they recall the
serving of the warrant. The program then follows them in real time, as the
events unwind from that point on.

Even with only talking heads as visuals, the drama is palpable as Meskis,
her attorney Dan Recht and Detective Jim Gerhardt recount the day police
entered the store.

Meskis: "I was absolutely dumbfounded and I said, 'Well, I guess show them in."

Recht: "It's the middle of the day and all of a sudden I get what can only
be described as a frantic telephone call from my client, Joyce Meskis."

Gerhardt: "He was very, very upset. Basically, we had a very long
conversation with an attorney screaming on a speaker phone, threatening
that we were going to look terrible in the newspapers the next day and
everything else."

Meskis: "I kept thinking to myself as I looked at the officers, 'Please
don't do this, please don't do this, please please don't do this. Because I
will have to stand on this.' "

As Meskis' attorney wins a temporary restraining order and the case makes
its way to the Colorado Supreme Court, the show examines the basic conflict.

"People need to feel safe to read what they want without fear that the
government is going to monitor what they read," Recht says.

Meth labs, Moriarity counters, are so dangerous to a community that police
are fearful of "even not finding one."

In its frustratingly short 26 minutes, the program includes only cursory
discussion of such issues. And that's a shame because the Tattered Cover
isn't the only store likely to face tough First Amendment challenges these
days.

In the wake of the Sept. 11-inspired Patriot Act, intended to give the
government more leeway to monitor terrorists, federal officials are now
allowed to commandeer lists of books borrowed from libraries or bought at
bookstores without going through the usual court procedures. What's more,
librarians and booksellers are prohibited from telling anyone that a search
has taken place.

The hastily passed law has librarians scrambling to protect patrons. Many
branches now post notices warning users that their reading records may be
viewed. The Boulder Public Library has begun purging its records. The Santa
Cruz (Calif.) Public Library shreds its checkout information.

And the Patriot Act goes much further than monitoring book habits. It
allows unprecedented surveillance of a person's activities on computer and
other electronic communication.

Shades of Orwell's 1984? No question.

Suddenly, the threat of terrorism is the metaphoric meth lab up the block.
How much of our freedoms are we willing to sacrifice to keep it out of the
neighborhood?

I would guess most Americans would stop short of forfeiting the right to
read and write what they choose, without fear of reprisal. Yet Moriarity
says: "It's already tough to put these people in jail, but every hurdle
that (is placed in the way) just makes it that much more difficult" - as if
our most basic rights were just some pesky annoyance designed to thwart law
and order.

In the Tattered Cover case, the Colorado Supreme Court eventually rendered
the search warrant invalid. As Meskis reads the decision for the first
time, the camera records her relief, her face relaxing like a fist unclenching.

She wouldn't have to defy a court order; the gunfight was over.

But Moriarity's reaction is more telling. After learning she won't be
allowed to execute the search warrant, she seems unruffled.

"If this is just one tool that's removed from us, then we'll just go after
the other tools we have." She notes that she hopes to have a warrant for
the meth-lab operator's arrest soon, despite the setback.

Which leads one to wonder why those avenues weren't taken in the first place.

Ultimately, the police did, indeed, find their man. And here's the final
joke on all concerned:

The book the suspect bought had nothing to do with the art of making
dangerous drugs. It was about Japanese calligraphy, of all things.

No offense to Moriarty, clearly a hard-working woman who's passionate about
her job, but in the end, the person with the white hat is easy to spot. In
this case, it's the bookseller who quietly but staunchly refuses to turn
over her sales records even though the horses are whinnying and the duel is
about to begin.

At high noon in America, we're going to need more gunslingers like this.

Patti Thorn is the books editor.