Washington Post reporter Dana Milbanks on the Denver Three:

Individually, they are ordinary citizens and political unknowns. But collectively, they are the Denver Three — a political sensation in Colorado that is causing agita to a White House that has bested far more sophisticated foes.

The Denver Three’s quest: to learn the identity of the “Mystery Man” who, impersonating a Secret Service agent, forcibly removed them from a taxpayer-funded Social Security event with President Bush three months ago because of a “No More Blood for Oil” bumper sticker on one of their cars.

Hold it just a second — those so-called “town meetings” on Social Security, where the audiences were pre-screened to agree with the Bush privatization plan — those fraudulent road shows were taxpayer-funded? Grrrrr…

It started when the three got tickets to Bush’s March 21 Social Security town hall meeting in Colorado. They flirted with protesting at the event and wore “Stop the Lies” T-shirts underneath their business attire. But Weise worried about getting arrested.

Even so, they were identified after they arrived as potential troublemakers, and then forcefully removed by a man who, they had been told, was a Secret Service agent. Only later did they learn that the man wasn’t an agent at all. The Secret Service launched an investigation (it’s a crime to impersonate a law enforcement official), and the agency and the White House have both learned the impostor’s identity — but they’re not talking.

No matter. The Denver Three say, in a memo they’re distributing, “ALL ARROWS POINT TO WHITE HOUSE.”

The White House says that’s bunk. But a series of similar events have left the administration vulnerable to such charges. In February, a Bush spokesman blamed an “overzealous volunteer” for a 42-person blacklist used at a Bush event in North Dakota. Complaints have also come this year from New Hampshire and Arizona, and during the campaign, event participants were once required to sign loyalty oaths for admission.

The Republican Party has “overzealous volunteer” training camps scattered across the country, turning out a rugged band of Freedom Fighters. They fight freedom wherever they find it, ever ready to stamp out free speech, free thought, and any concept of fair play.

The conviction of 80-year-old Edgar Ray Killen for his part in the murders, forty-one years ago, of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner reminds me of a story told in the Ken Burns documentary, Baseball. The first Commissioner of Baseball was a former federal judge named Kenesaw Mountain Landis:

As a judge, he had once sentenced an aging bank robber to fifteen years in jail.

“Your honor,” the man said, “I’m 72 years old. I can’t serve that long.”

Landis replied, “Well, do the best you can.”

Justice may sleep, and sleep for a long time, but it still lives.