They told him he had to go to "the free-speech zone."

The police had established a protest area a good half mile from the South Carolina airport hanger where Bush was supposed to speak last fall. Brett A. Bursey wanted to get closer than, in his words, "out there behind the coliseum by the dumpsters," so he and his friends approached the police.

"We attempted to dialogue for a while, them telling me to go to the free-speech zone, me saying I was in it: the United States of America," Mr. Bursey said. Finally, he said, an airport policeman told him he had to put down his sign ("No War for Oil") or leave.

"'You mean, it's the content of my sign?' I asked him," Mr. Bursey said. "He said, `Yes, sir, it's the content of your sign.' "

Mr. Bursey kept the sign and was arrested; he said he watched Air Force One land from the back of a patrol wagon and spent the night in the county jail.

As routine but no less disturbing as such events have become in this country, normally that would have just about been the end of the story. But while the charge against Bursey was soon dropped, news of his terrible crime against the state did not escape the attention of the true guardians of our liberties.

. . . last month, the local United States attorney, J. Strom Thurmond Jr., brought federal charges against Mr. Bursey under a seldom-used statute that allows the Secret Service to restrict access to areas the president is visiting. He faces six months in jail and a $5,000 fine.