QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES:
(in a thick German accent) You haff your papers?

A tale of civil rights gone bad courtesy of Eschaton:

Meet Dudley Hiibel. He's a 59 year old cowboy who owns a small ranch outside of Winnemucca, Nevada. He lives a simple life, but he's his own man. You probably never would have heard of Dudley Hiibel if it weren't for his belief in the U.S. Constitution.

One balmy May evening back in 2000, Dudley was standing around minding his own business when all of a sudden, a policeman pulled-up and demanded that Dudley produce his ID. Dudley, having done nothing wrong, declined. He was arrested and charged with "failure to cooperate" for refusing to show ID on demand. And it's all on video.

On the 22nd of March 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether Dudley and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show "the papers" whenever a cop demands them.

For more click here.

I watched the video (scroll down to the bottom of this page for a link), and at some points Hiibel is practically begging to be arrested, but the basic facts mentioned above are true: this old cowboy got busted because he didn't show the cops his "papers."

Well, I'm outraged; how about you? I mean, sure, if Hiibel didn't want to go to jail he probably should have kissed the cop's ass, but does this mean that we are now required to carry legitimizing documents as did the citizens of Nazi Germany? This is pretty creepy when you get right down to it.

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