Richard J. Daley Lives

He's ensconsed in some Homeland Security basement, showing federal law enforcement troops the Chicago Way of teaching the dirty fucking hippies some manners.

From Digby:

So, they're beating up science fiction writers at the border now?

Hugo-award-nominated science fiction author Dr. Peter Watts is in serious legal trouble after he was beaten, pepper-sprayed and imprisoned by American border guards at a Canada U.S. border crossing December 8. This is a call to friends, fans and colleagues to help.

Peter, a Canadian citizen, was on his way back to Canada after helping a friend move house to Nebraska over the weekend. He was stopped at the border crossing at Port Huron, Michigan by U.S. border police for a search of his rental vehicle. When Peter got out of the car and questioned the nature of the search, the gang of border guards subjected him to a beating, restrained him and pepper sprayed him. At the end of it, local police laid a felony charge of assault against a federal officer against Peter. On Wednesday, he posted bond and walked was taken across the border to Canada in shirtsleeves (he was released by Port Huron officials with his car and possessions locked in impound, into a winter storm that evening). He's home safe. For now. But he has to go back to Michigan to face the charge brought against him.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden comments:

For what it’s worth, I don’t know exactly what happened, but a couple of things seem pretty evident to me. One is that this wasn’t a routine border search. Rather, American border guards in Port Huron, Michigan demanded to search Watts’s car as he was leaving the US for his native Canada. This is very squirrelly. We’re conducting exit searches now?

Another is that Peter Watts is, as Charlie Stross observes, the kind of person who’s extraordinarily unlikely to throw the first punch, as Watts is being accused of having done.

And Watts himself writes:

Along some other timeline, I did not get out of the car to ask what was going on. I did not repeat that question when refused an answer and told to get back into the vehicle. In that other timeline I was not punched in the face, pepper-sprayed, shit-kicked, handcuffed, thrown wet and half-naked into a holding cell for three fucking hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation (although they did try to get me to waive my Miranda rights. Twice.). Nor was I finally dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my fucking paper notepad withheld until they could find someone among their number literate enough to distinguish between handwritten notes on story ideas and, I suppose, nefarious terrorist plots. I was not left without my jacket in the face of Ontario’s first winter storm, after all buses and intercity shuttles had shut down for the night.

In some other universe I am warm and content and not looking at spending two years in jail for the crime of having been punched in the face.

Update here.

I don't know all the details of what happened here, but suffice to say that this kind of treatment of anyone who is not an armed criminal is completely beyond the pale.

The police state atmosphere in this country has been with us for a very long time, particularly for racial and ethnic minorities. But it has escalated to very scary proportions in the last decade. And with that escalation has come the inevitable arrogance of power that assumes that any questioning of authority is a criminal act.

I will just add that such arrogance of power is fed and strengthened by national leadership that insists on perpetuating even the most pointless, illegal, self-destructive wars.