Just one day after the Salem Statesman Journal reported on an adopt-a-road sign sponsored by the American Nazi Party, reader Notorious J.E.S. from over at BlueOregon.com informs us that the sign is gone. Cara Roberts Murez has the whole story in this morning's Statesman Journal:

A pair of signs proclaiming that the American Nazi Party has adopted a road in rural Salem are gone.

Marion County commissioners have not changed their stance on allowing the group to participate in a volunteer litter cleanup program, but the signs were vandalized this week and won’t be replaced unless Nazi party members pay to have the county install new ones.

Commissioners and county staff, meanwhile, have been inundated with angry e-mails and phone calls from people in Salem and all over the United States wondering why the county allowed the group to sponsor cleanup on a stretch of Sunnyview Road NE between Cordon Road and 82nd Avenue.

“It’s been a wide variety of people — walks of life and also geographically,” said Marion County Public Works Director Jim Sears. “How would I characterize it? It was pretty intense.”

As reader Eric notes, freedom of speech should not be abridged in this case or any other, and one solution could have been for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to perform cleanup on the miles before and after the Nazi sign as a sign of protest. While I don't condone people taking the law into their own hands by removing the signs, I understand their position and do not fault them for their feelings.