"American Stasi"

Charles Pierce is always a good read, as evidenced by the fact that he wrote the phrase from which I stole the title to this post.

 http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/nypd-spy-on-liberal-groups-7552703

To wit:

I expect we'll be hearing howls of outrage, and anguished cries for Liberty (!) from all the Republican contenders when word gets around that the NYPD apparently woke up one morning and decided it was the American Stasi.I expect we'll hear humble apologies from the people who laughed at the nervous-liberal slippery slope arguments about how unleashing the power of the U.S. intelligence apparatus on American Muslims invariably would result in that power's being loosed generally on people who disagreed with the government itself, and for any reason. I expect the president and his men will condemn this inexcusable abridgement of the Bill of Rights vigorously and vow to make whole its victims to the full extent of the law.

Why a metropolitan police force is sending officers (undercover, no less) to any other metropolitan area for the sole purpose of spying on American citizens is beyond me, but then again I'm still trying to sort the utility of police departments of all sizes routinely employing assault weapons in their day-to-day operations and obtaining armored vehicles to ride around in.

When cops become soldiers

And why it is bad to issue warrants that don't contain a no-knock provision and then have local police SWAT teams serve them as if they did. The extraordinary militarization of police forces has almost universally been a very bad trend.

The Supremes need to have another look at this sort of crap.

Just ask the Mayor of Berwyn Heights, MD.

In the mean time, protect your dogs.

In the kitchen, Georgia spun to face the sound of the splintering door. Men in black burst through the front door and into the living room.

Georgia stood trembling in front of the kitchen stove. Payton, who had been stretched out in a corner of the living room farthest from the front door, his head resting near the threshold to the kitchen "turned toward the front door when I turned," Georgia recalled. "He didn't have time to do anything else." Almost instantly, men in black ran forward and shot Payton in the face, Georgia said. "They kept shooting," she recalled. "I didn't know how many times they shot Payton because there was so much gunfire."

"Down on the ground!" Georgia recalled someone screaming at her. She was too terrified to move.

Chase, always timid even when there was nothing to fear, did what he did best -- he ran. He ran away from the men in black, zipped past Georgia at the stove, Georgia recalled. The screaming, running men followed Chase, shooting as he tried escaping into the dining room, Georgia said. She watched in horror as men in black rushed the dining room from all directions. "I could hear Chase whimpering," Georgia said. Then she heard someone shoot at Chase again, she said.

Men kept yelling at Georgia to get down, but she couldn't budge. "Somebody pushed me on the ground, and they put a gun to my head," she said. Face down on the kitchen floor, Georgia felt someone yank her hands behind her, rip the spoon away and secure her hands. When she lifted her eyes, she could just see Payton's big head resting near the kitchen threshold. He wasn't moving.