Playing the "terrorist" card

MANIFESTO

Like many others, I continue to boycott BP, and situations like this one don't exactly weaken my resolve.

Last week, Drew Wheelan, the conservation coordinator for the American Birding Association, was filming himself across the street from the BP building/Deepwater Horizon response command in Houma, Louisiana ... [H]e was standing in a field that did not belong to the oil company when a police officer approached him and asked him for ID and "strongly suggest[ed]" that he get lost since "BP doesn't want people filming."

The situation got appreciably worse once Wheelan left and included his being pulled over and having various credentials confiscated.

It turns out that

the cop in question was actually a sheriff's deputy for Terrebonne Parish. The deputy was off official duty at the time, and working in the private employ of BP. Though the deputy failed to include the traffic stop in his incident report, Major Malcolm Wolfe of the sheriff's office says the deputy's pulling someone over in his official vehicle while working for a private company is standard and acceptable practice, because Wheelan was acting suspicious and could have been a terrorist.

Ah, the Bushies strike again: justifying the limiting of civil rights in the name of security.

Let's put it this way: The parties involved in the above episode were a bird watcher and a corporation that has destroyed a large and important portion of the American ecosystem. It's pretty obvious who the terrorist is.