"but since he was actually looking at honest to goodness child pornography there's really no excuse. The only rationale I can think of is that maybe the library thinks that librarians shouldn't be looking at what the patrons are doing on the computers."

I don't look at any porn, adult or child, not at home, and certainly never would in a public space.  AFAIC, if he got busted, it was for shear stupidity.  In my mind, the librarian did the right thing.  Did she disregard her supervisor?  So What?  She followed her moral sense of what was right/wrong.  Law enforcement seems to be behind her, and I'm thinking the library supervision should tuck their collective tails between their legs and give her her job back. They, not she, messed up.  

[/end of rant]

there's only one way to find out...

I would assume like so many other probationary employees, you can be terminated without any particular cause at any time during your probation.

Probably, as long as the termination doesn't break any laws.

 IANAL, but could her action come under any possible interpretation of whistle-blowing?

He must be insane if he thought he could use a computer in a public library to view child porn.  But, I don't think that rises to the level of a legal threshold for insanity

That's right, it doesn't. From wikipedia: In the United States a state of temporary mental impairment is not a defense...The insanity defense is based on evaluations by forensic professionals that the defendant was incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong at the time the offense was committed. In addition, some jurisdictions require that the evaluation address the issue of whether the defendant was able to control his behavior at the time of the offense.

Post-John Hinckley, Jr many US laws around the insanity plea were changed. Instead of the prosecution having to prove that the defendant is sane, the defendant's counsel must prove that he is insane in the legal sense. This isn't easy by any means: Jeffery Dahmer plead insanity but was found by a jury to be sane and guilty. This illustrates the difference between the legal and the layman's definitions of insanity: a cursory examination of the facts of Chef Jeff's case prove that while he may not have been legally insane he was fucking nuts.

Chrisler has no hope of an insanity defense unless he claimed at the time of his arrest that he was downloading porn at the library because the aliens who live in his eyebrow need it to keep Bigfoot from eating the Pope's liver. Claiming that he's a pedophile with an overwhelming urge to watch kiddie porn might satisfy the layman's definition of insanity ("Dude is nuts!"), but if he made any effort to cover his tracks (say, by tilting the monitor so the images couldn't be observed) it undercuts a claim that he didn't realize that what he was doing was considered wrong by society at large. Even such a claim backed up with a long history of treatment for his disorder and proof that his possession of illegal images was his attempt to prevent himself from actual contact with children wouldn't be enough to support an insanity plea.

After examining the facts of the case it's more likely that Chrisler is just really stupid. I mean, he went to the public library to download porn and got caught and warned not to do it again. He went back to the same library a week later and did the same exact thing. That's not evidence of insanity, it's evidence of stupidity.

-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things.

Yet, there's the business of the favorable job rating she got six weeks ago

    Well, that's what Biester's lawyers are laying out there right now. The library says it can't produce the records for privacy reasons, and I have little reason to doubt this is true. (Just think about the can of worms if partial or even total release was an option-- it would be "privacy unless a lawsuit comes up", which is no privacy at all.) So if Biester has her copy of the paperwork, all her lawyers have to say to cover their asses is that she believed it was a favorable review, whether or not anyone else would be encouraged by it. If the goal is either to get her job back or else force some kind of financial settlement, then this is a win/win situation. It's aggressive advocacy, but then that's what you want from a good lawyer, eh? The Fresno Bee article mentions she's exploring a case against the county; make of that what you will.
    I couldn't tell that the library officials are changing their story so much as the county officials are-- or rather that different folks in the local government have different agendas when it comes to this situation. I worked for a small town library briefly, and while I was never "in the know", it was pretty obvious the city and county clashed more than once*. If there's a lot of money involved, I can see how alternate takes on this might be emerging from those willing to speak to the press.
    My hunch, and strictly a hunch, as to what's up with the termination? That the library system was trying to pinch pennies, and one way to do so was to keep a probationary worker at the post as long as possible-- which means Biester was due to be terminated no matter how well she worked, in order to save the library from offering her full benefits, or even partial ones. It would be a shitty thing to do, but I doubt there would be a dearth of applicants for the job, given how many folks I've met who day dreamed about working at a library one day. But again, this is just a hunch, and maybe too cynical by far.

     *It was about money, as usual. The library was purely a city library, but thanks to population growth, an ever expanding amount of city residents were outside the legal city limits, which meant paying $90 a year for a library card, versus free cards for city residents. Considering you could be under a mile away from the library and still not in the city limits, let's just say the local elected officials were hearing about it from parents. Problem was, the county extended into the Cascade mountains, and included a ski lodge and several businesses who were dead set against adding any more financial burden, like adding a library. Expanding the city limits was also tricky, because there were farms and cow pastures three blocks away from the city limits in many directions. Quite a mess for an otherwise quiet college town.

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

what I suspect this guy will argue, (as the employee did) was that he didn't realize that there were child porn images/video in what he had stored and as evidence he'll say "If I knew it was child porn - something clearly illegal, I wouldn't have been handling the files in public at the library".

This is tough, 'cause as you pointed out, I'm sure there're cases where this could possibly happen. If you frequent the likes of 4chan, for example; what if someone posts child porn to one of those but you don't know it until it's too late?  I imagine just downloading a thumbnail would be enough to land one in serious hot water.

This seems to happen more than people think.  There was a big bru-ha-ha at my school back in 2006 because some undergrad took his computer to the help desk and asked them to back up certain files, including a folder called "Kiddie Porn."  Needless to say he got busted.  How'd someone get into college but not be able to figure that one out?

Q: What do you think of western civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

To be fair, everything we know about this case is what Biesterfeld and her lawyers have chosen to tell us.  We don't have the library's side at all, so we can't really say they don't have a leg to stand on.

It's not easy for an employee to sue an employer for being fired.  In America, you can generally be fired for any reason at all, with limited exceptions for things like race and sex and disability.  Public employees like Biesterfeld, and union employees, sometimes have it easier.  But the best argument Biesterfeld has is that she was fired for being a "whistleblower," except she didn't blow the whistle on her employer, and she may have a tough time proving that the reason she was fired is because she reported the child pornography, and not because of some other reason that the library has not yet chosen to reveal to the press.