Klansman Reinstated As State Trooper

From CBS News courtesy of AlterNet:

Robert Henderson was not fired as a state trooper because he belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and another white supremacist group, authorities said.

Instead, he was ousted because he could not uphold public trust while participating in such groups, they said.

An arbitrator disagreed, ordering the State Patrol to reinstate Henderson within 60 days and pay him back wages. The state went to court Friday to keep him off the force.

"The integrity of Nebraska's law enforcement is at risk," Attorney General Jon Bruning said at news conference in Lincoln. "The Constitution does not require law enforcement to employ anyone tied to the KKK."

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How would you like to be pulled over for "driving while black" by this guy?

I'm very inclined to side with the state of Nebraska on this one. I mean, historically, the Klan isn't much more than a racist right-wing terrorist group; obviously, a cop ought not to be a terrorist, and, obviously, a cop ought not to be a racist. On the other hand, according to Wikipedia, there are today something like six different KKK organizations: is his group one of the violent ones? If not, the issue becomes tricky. All Americans are fully entitled to the rights of free speech and free association, without which, ironically, the Civil Rights Movement could have never gotten off the ground. As much as I despise what the Klan stands for, firing this guy conceivably opens the door to firing cops who, say, don't support the occupation of Iraq, or who support gay and lesbian rights.

Freedom is messy, and it constantly brings up conundrums such as this. I'm sure that I'm missing out on any number of important points here. For instance, after Timothy McVeigh's infamous bombing in Oklahoma of a Federal building, the US armed forces managed to somehow purge itself of the extremist elements who inspired him to commit his crime--of course, what with recruiting shortfalls, that's been changing recently. But my point is that if the military was able to do this without a Constitutional challenge, it seems to me that a state police force could do the same thing. I just don't know how.

I sure hope somebody's able to figure this one out.

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