Ethics

Canadian Author Roughed Up at Border

By Ed Brayton

Amy Goodman isn't the only one having trouble at the U.S./Canada border. A Canadian writer named Peter Watts was apparently roughed up at the border trying to come into Michigan. My buddy DarkSyd knows Watts and has an interview with him at the Orlando Examiner.

[F]or three f*&%ing hours, thrown into an even colder jail cell overnight, arraigned, and charged with assaulting a federal officer, all without access to legal representation ... dumped across the border in shirtsleeves: computer seized, flash drive confiscated, even my [freaking] 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'll say the same thing I said when Goodman was detained: This is no way for a free, democratic nation to behave.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on December 19, 2009 (boomark / email).