Filtering the First Amendment Good policy arises from cool heads and careful deliberation. Unfortunately, both were alarmingly absent in events leading up to the Library Board's recent adoption of a policy that requires software blocking on all computers in the library system's 23 branches. The Information Age certainly poses difficult policy questions. Solutions must be found, but they won't be found in a rush to judgment engineered by those on the right whose interests stretch far beyond the library's electronic holdings. Somewhere in the race to an extreme solution -- initiated by the Shelby County Commission's extreme decision to hold $4 million in library funds hostage -- something, namely liberty, got lost. Derisive talk turned to those who are "hiding behind" the First Amendment. "Protected by" is the preferred terminology, however, and serious consideration of constitutionally guaranteed protections was all but absent from the deliberations. Ensuring the welfare of minors is certainly a compelling governmental interest, but as a federal judge in Virginia determined last year, there are less restrictive means for doing so. These were removed from the table from the start, however, as the commission's call for a review of current policy steadily became an ultimatum for filtering. Those who are tempted to sacrifice the free flow of information at the altar of family values should, as the Citizens for Community Values certainly do, consider Cincinnati. "People in Cincinnati are proud of the fact that they have a pretty clean area up there," says CCV executive director George Kuykendall, whose organization has received both tactical and financial support from the Cincinnati-based National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families. In 1990, thanks to an atmosphere created by the National Coalition and other groups, Cincinnati took an art gallery to court for displaying the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and became the only community in the history of the republic to charge a museum with criminal obscenity. The museum was acquitted, but still: That's hardly something to be proud of. Bring Back the Runoff Memphis should bring back the runoff provision in the city mayoral election, which was struck down in federal court in 1991. The reasons for eliminating the runoff are no longer valid. When Memphis had a white majority, the NAACP and the Justice Department argued that the runoff helped ensure white candidates would be elected, assuming that black and whites voted as a bloc. That is no longer the case. Blacks now hold a nearly 3-2 voting majority in Memphis, according to registration figures. Moreover, black and white voters in Memphis and other urban cities have shown a willingness to cross racial lines. Mayor Willie Herenton received significant white support this year and in 1995, and white mayoral candidates in Baltimore, Gary (Indiana), and Oakland have gotten strong black support in recent years. Finally, black candidates like Herenton and Joe Ford, by spending a combined $1.3 million, have demolished the old argument that a black candidate can't mount an expensive citywide campaign. No runoff means no mandate. Memphis could well elect a mayor Thursday with roughly one-third of the overall vote, and in a 15-candidate field, the mathematical possibilities are even more troubling. The city mayor, like the county mayor and district councilmen, should have to appeal to a broad enough constituency to win by a majority.