Know Thy Rulers

Regarding the controversy over whether the press and voters should concern themselves with the alleged sexual or other moral misconduct of leaders like Senator Gary Hart ((PRESS, June 8)), I offer this quote from John Adams' Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765): "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have . . . an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers."

Dan Graydon Fefferman

American Constitution Committee

Washington