After some primary elections, the best we can say is that we feel better if we vote than if we don't vote. But Tuesday's primary election indicates several lessons about Alaska's voters that candidates would do well to remember. Read more...

Lorraine T. Farstad, 78, died Aug. 20, 2008, in Ketchikan.

S. Georgiana Murphy, 80, died Aug. 19, 2008, in Ketchikan.

Tom Douglas Wetzel, 65, died July 20, 2008, in Burien, Wash.

Many years ago, an outgoing Ketchikan police chief complained that the most annoying thing about his job was that generally, people pick and choose which laws apply to whom. And usually, they decide the law applies to the other guy.

To wit: If somebody is parked across my driveway, I want a police officer there NOW to cite the miscreant. But if I just need to run into my friend's house to pick up a recipe, say, and "must" block her neighbor's driveway "just for a second" while I run in - well, I certainly shouldn't get a ticket for THAT.

His complaints came to mind Monday when we read the story of five police detectives in Vermont who tried to bully a librarian into turning over the library's public-access computers to check them out for possible use by a missing child.

Just like libraries are for everyone, so are laws - even for those who enforce them.

In the Vermont case, all the police needed was a piece of paper from a judge ordering that the library turn over the requested material. When a 12-year-old is missing, there isn't much difficulty in finding a judge to sign such a paper. Sure enough, police were able to get a warrant, once they decided to spend their time figuring out how to follow the law rather than figuring out how to make a 4-foot-10 librarian knuckle under to their demands.

The staff at the Ketchikan Public Library, and libraries across Alaska, are covered by a statute (AS 40.25.140, confidentiality of library records) in such matters. It says "the names, addresses, or other personal identifying information of people who have used materials made available to the public by a library shall be kept confidential, except upon court order, and are not subject to inspection ... This section applies to libraries operated by the state, a municipality, or a public school, including the University of Alaska. "

There is an exception: Records of a public elementary or secondary-school library identifying a minor shall be made available to the child's parent or guardian who requests them.

Ketchikan has not had incidents in which police demand information that the library legally cannot give, according to library staff here. The library follows the law, and so do local law enforcement officials. (The city librarian did recall one faxed request from Florida police, unaccompanied by any court order or subpoena, for Ketchikan Public Library Internet records. The request was referred to the city attorney; the library did not provide the requested materials and that was the end of that, she said.)

It's unfortunate that those sworn to uphold the law elsewhere sometimes forget that we have laws in place specifically to prevent anyone from acting on the temptation to believe that the end justifies the means. Certainly, anything that will help to find a missing child should be done - and should be done legally.

In the Randolph, Vt., case, police did get the computers under a warrant, and while there is some concern that they might have been able to look at the records of what everyone in that town did on those computers, the warrant restricted them to only such matters as concerned the missing-girl investigation.

In Ketchikan, such a warrant might not have been much help. A crack computer whiz might be able to unearth information, but our library's public computers get "cleaned" every night, when their history and memory are erased, we're told.

We're glad that little librarian held her ground, and glad our librarians here aren't asked to choose between the law and those who enforce it.