First take: Citizen-judge's historic view improves

With the removal this week of the old Liberty Bell Pavilion, Philadelphia's Independence Mall appears more to the liking of one of its most persistent boosters and critics - the former chief, now senior, judge of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Edward R. Becker.

It matters what Becker thinks, and not just because his courthouse chambers overlook the mall. Since 9/11, this federal judge of three-plus decades has put his considerable clout behind the worthwhile efforts to brush back excessive security measures at the nation's birthplace.

Becker couldn't join the send-off Monday for the dismantled remnants of the pavilion, while he wages a tough, personal battle against cancer. He remains a major player, though, in the fight to keep the mall area as free as the American democracy. (Pictured at a sitting for his Yale law school portrait by artist Michael Shane Neal.)

That means keeping Independence National Historical Park accessible to visitors - a wise, guiding principle for Becker and other civic and business leaders allied in the Independence Mall Business and Residents Coalition.

These folks fought the months-long closure of Chestnut Street that followed the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. As for the absurd, now abandoned, plans by the National Park Service to fence a two-block area around Independence Hall, the judge once described it, aptly, as "an abomination."

Not only Becker's enthusiasm for the cause, but his close friendship with Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) - dating to their undergraduate days at Penn - gave the coalition of mall advocates important access to key players in Washington. Thus, the judge has helped give voice to a common sense cry for restraint in the way the nation protects its values, while rigorously safeguarding its people.

Citizens' access to the old Pennsylvania statehouse known as Independence Hall where the great documents of democracy were debated isn't as unencumbered as it should be, but through the efforts of citizen-leaders like Ed Becker, it's vastly improved. With continued citizen vigilance and active engagement where needed, democracy's shrines can be freed even more from excessive security measures.