How many movies have we seen with villainous Gestapo men, attired in leather-trenchcoats, marching down train corridors, demanding “Your papers, please!”? The ever-escalating securitization of America, fueled simultaneously by liberal Nanny-ism and by war-time security concerns, produces a thousand stories of nincompoopery and Jack-in-Office excess monthly. One irrational demand for personal ID on a bus in Denver seems to have inspired a web-site erected to do something about all this.

Despite the presence of a banner on that web-site from the Colorado branch of a loathsome organization, I’m inclined to sympathize with the lady’s position. I’ve come pretty close to taking a poke at courthouse rent-a-cops more than once myself.

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Story picked up Sunday, November 27th, Denver Post.

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A disagreeable example of just where this kind of thing can lead is provided by Malaysia, where a cellphone-captured video of a Chinese female suspect stripped and forced to perform “ear squats,” hands-free deep knee bends performed holding hands to ears, has produced a scandal being reported all over South-east Asia: Sydney Herald and BBC.