MARK STEYN WRITES...
At a time when over 4 million people have had their
health insurance canceled, it’s good to know that some Americans can still
access prompt medical treatment... even if they don’t want it.
David Eckert was pulled over by police in Deming, N.M.,
for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign in the Walmart parking
lot.
He was asked to step out of the vehicle, and waited on
the sidewalk.
Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench
of his buttocks...
* THIS IS NOT A JOKE... NOT A SATIRE... NOT
"REPORTING" BY THE ONION; THIS IS REALLY WHAT HAPPENED, FOLKS -
HAPPENED IN AMERICA. PLEASE READ ON...
...a subject on which New Mexico’s constabulary is
apparently expert, and determined that it was because he had illegal drugs
secreted therein. So they arrested him, and took him to Gila Regional Medical
Center in neighboring Hidalgo County, where Mr. Eckert was forced to undergo
two abdominal X-rays, two rectal probes, three enemas, and defecate thrice in
front of medical staff and representatives of two law-enforcement agencies,
before being sedated and subjected to a colonoscopy — all procedures performed
against his will and without a valid warrant.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Alas, Mr. Eckert’s body proved to be a drug-free zone,
and so, after twelve hours of detention, he was released. If you’re wondering
where his lawyer was during all this, no attorney was present, as police had
not charged Mr. Eckert with anything, so they’re apparently free to frolic and
gambol up his rectum to their hearts’ content.
* OBVIOUSLY WE'RE GOING TO FIND OUT MORE... BUT FROM WHAT
I KNOW... SAVE FOR THE BITING SARCASM AND WIT, STEYN IS DESCRIBING EXACTLY WHAT
HAPPENED.
Deming police chief Brandon Gigante says his officers did
everything “by the book.”
* WHAT THE HELL KIND OF "BOOK" DO THEY USE IN
DEMING, N.M.?
* FYI... I ACTUALLY OWN UNDEVELOPED LAND IN DEMING! NEVER
BEEN THERE, BUT I PAY THE TAXES EVERY YEAR.
Getting into the spirit of things, Gila Regional Medical
Center subsequently sent Mr. Eckert a bill for $6,000. It appears he had one of
what the president calls those “bad apple” plans that doesn’t cover anal rape.
* AGAIN... SOUNDS INSANE... BUT JIBES WITH WHAT I'VE
HEARD ELSEWHERE CONCERNING THIS "INCIDENT."
Fleet Street’s Daily Mail reports that this is at least
the second anal fishing expedition mounted by local authorities. Timothy Young
underwent a similar experience after being fingered by the same police dog,
Leo, who may not be very good at sniffing drugs but certainly has an eye for a
pert bottom.
(At the time of Mr. Young’s arrest, Leo’s police license
had reportedly expired a year-and-a-half earlier, but why get hung up on
technicalities?)
Messrs. Eckert and Young may yet win their cases.
* MAY...???
But one notes that the Supreme Court has dramatically
circumscribed Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and
seizure when it occurs at America’s border, and post-9/11 the “border” has been
redefined to mean anywhere within 100 miles of the actual frontier.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Many European countries are not 100 miles wide in their
entirety. A hundred-mile buffer zone from Belgium’s northern border, for
example, would be well south of the southern border and deep into France. But
Deming falls within the 100-mile Fourth Amendment–free zone, and so, I note,
between the seacoast and the Quebec border, does the whole of my own state of
New Hampshire. It would be prudent perhaps for Granite Staters to affect a
loose-buttocked saunter when strolling around the White Mountains.
Of course, even with millions of canceled health-care
policies freeing up medical staff, it is unlikely that the authorities could
ever give the full Deming PD treatment to the bulk of the populace. Perhaps
that’s why Americans do not seem to get terribly exercised by these cases.
There are over 300 million people, and the chances of Leo taking a fancy to
one’s own posterior are relatively remote. Yet tyranny is always capricious,
and the willingness of police and compliant doctors and nurses to go along with
it ought to disturb a supposedly free people, no matter how comparatively rare
it may seem.
* IT DISTURBS ME.
Meanwhile, an unarmed woman was gunned down on the
streets of Washington for no apparent crime other than driving too near
Barackingham Palace and thereby posing a threat to national security. As
disturbing as Miriam Carey’s bullet-riddled body and vehicle were, the public
indifference to it is even worse. Ms. Carey does not appear to be guilty of any
act other than a panic attack when the heavy-handed and heavier-armed palace
guard began yelling at her. Much of what was reported in the hours after her
death seems dubious: We are told Ms. Carey was “mentally ill,” although she had
no medications in her vehicle and those at her home back in Connecticut are
sufficiently routine as to put millions of other Americans in the category of
legitimate target. We are assured that she suffered from post-partum depression,
as if the inability to distinguish between a depressed mom and a suicide bomber
testifies to the officers’ professionalism. Under D.C. police rules, cops are
not permitted to fire on a moving vehicle, because of the risk to pedestrians
and other drivers. But the Secret Service and the Capitol Police enjoy no such
restraints, so the car doors are full of bullet holes. The final moments of the
encounter remain a mystery, but police were supposedly able to extract Ms.
Carey’s baby from the back of a two-door vehicle before dispatching the
defenseless mother to meet her maker.
* FOLKS... I WANT TO BELIEVE THAT STEYN IS WAY OFF BASE.
I TRULY DO! BUT... LIKE SO MUCH NEWS NOWADAYS, THIS "INCIDENT" WAS
PUSHED OFF THE PUBLIC STAGE SO QUICKLY THAT I DIDN'T COME ACROSS TOO MANY HARD
DETAILS. PERHAPS I'LL GO BACK AND LOOK INTO THIS FURTHER. IT DOES SEEM STRANGE
THAT THE POLICE WERE ABLE TO "RESCUE" THE BABY FROM WITHIN IN THE CAR
YET COULDN'T CAPTURE THE MOTHER ALIVE.
Did I mention she was African American? When a black teen
dies in a late-night one-on-one encounter with a fellow citizen on the streets
of Sanford, Fla., it’s the biggest thing since Selma. But when a defenseless
black woman is gunned down by a posse of robo-cops in broad daylight on the
streets of the capital, the Reverend Jackson and the Reverend Sharpton and all
the other bouffed and pampered grievance-mongers are apparently cool with it.
(*BITING MY LIP*)
This isn’t very difficult. When you need large numbers of
supposedly highly trained elite officers to kill an unarmed woman with a baby,
you’re doing it wrong. In perhaps the most repugnant reaction to Ms. Carey’s
death, the United States Congress expressed their “gratitude” to the officers
who killed her and gave them a standing ovation.
(*SILENCE*)
Back in the Eighties, the Queen woke up to find a
confused young man at the end of her bed. She talked to him calmly until help
arrived and he was led away.
* I REMEMBER THAT!
A few years later, Her Majesty’s Canadian prime minister,
Jean Chrétien, was confronted by an aggrieved protester. As is his wont, he
dealt with it somewhat more forcefully than his sovereign, throttling the guy,
forcing him to the ground, and breaking his tooth, until the Mounties arrived
to rescue the assailant from the prime minister. But, had the London and Ottawa
intruders been gunned down by SWAT teams, I cannot imagine for a moment either
the British or Canadian parliament rising to applaud such an outcome. This was
a repulsive act by Congress.
(*SILENCE*)
Miriam Carey is already forgotten, and the lawyer her
family hired has now, conveniently, been jailed for a bad debt.
(*SILENCE*)
I am not one for cheap historical analogies: My mother
spent four of her childhood years under Nazi occupation, and it is insulting to
her and millions of others who know the real thing to bandy overheated
comparisons. But there is a despotic trend in American government. Too many of
our rulers and their enforcers reflexively see the citizenry primarily as a
threat.
* THIS... IS... TRUE...
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