Museum is needed to remember old freedoms

I think it was a mistake for New York Gov. George Pataki to cave in to the demands of the families of the 9/11 victims and abort the plans for a “Freedom Museum” at the site of the new World Trade Center (Sept. 29). It’s like the lyrics of that old song “Big Yellow Taxi”: “They cut down the trees and put them in a tree museum, and they charge all the people a dollar and a half just to see ‘em.”

It’s clear that the state of our freedom has been under such a sustained attack by the Bush administration and the craven cowards in Congress that we need a museum to remember what we had before. You remember before? Before the Patriot Act, claims about weapons of mass destruction and waging preemptive war, before the president had the power to throw an American citizen in prison with no due process -- just on his signature.

Wow, those were the good old days.

DALE JENNINGS

Boulevard, Calif.