(no subject)

I'm just posting this quote to make it easier for me to track down next time I need it:

Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he "didn't want to see any stories" quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.

nebraska, 10/9

The worst day of my trip was in Nebraska. The landscapes I drove through for most of the day were drab and dull, and then it got worse. A Nebraska State Patrol car passed me; I slowed down from my slightly-speeding pace; the patrol car dropped behind me; I thought uh-oh; the flashing lights went on; and pretty soon I was stopped on the shoulder of the next exit ramp.

I rolled down the automatic window before shutting off the car. Officer A. Indecipherable (as I later read his name from an official document) then walked up on the passenger side, so I had to put the key in the ignition and start the car up again just so I could roll down the other window. That probably didn't get us off to a good start.

Officer Indecipherable looked about 19--if memory serves, he was wearing braces--but he projected authority well. He asked me some questions about where I'd come from and where I was heading. I explained that I was on my way home to California after a month driving around the country. "Sort of a vacation?" "Yeah," I said, "sort of a vacation." All through our encounter he had a perplexed look of concentration on his face, like he was sure I was up to something, and if he could just find the hole in my story, he'd blow this case wide open.

The question of speed--well, let's say of velocity--never came up. The reason he pulled me over, he told me, was that I had no front license plate. This was because I had bought the car shortly before leaving California, and the new plates the DMV was supposed to send me hadn't arrived yet. My explanation didn't seem to satisfy (and later I learned that it was wrong--thanks, Toyota dealer!). "It is my intention," Officer Indecipherable told me, "to write you a vehicle defect card." There would not be any fine or jail time associated with the vehicle defect card; I would just have to correct the defect, and have a law enforcement officer witness it and sign the card so I could send it back. That sounded easy. I was relieved.

Officer Indecipherable asked if I'd mind coming back to his car while he wrote out the vehicle defect card.

On my way back to the squad car, he stopped me to ask "Do you have any weapons on your person?" I told him I didn't. "Not even a knife?"

Not even a knife.

As he wrote out the vehicle defect card--it seemed to require an awful lot of writing--we continued our conversation. "What have you got in the trunk?" Instruments, I told him, and some suitcases. "Oh, you're a musician?" Sadly, I admitted that I was. "So that's why you've got all those bags in the front of the car?" I had an awesomely messy car because I'd been driving for a month, but that seemed like extraneous detail.

"Do you have any weapons in the car?" I told him I didn't. "Not even a knife?"

Not even a knife.

"Do you have any contraband in the car?" No. "Any heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD?"

Some of you don't know how prudish I am. I didn't have heroin, cocaine, marijuana, or LSD in the car. I have never had any heroin, cocaine, marijuana, or LSD in the car, or in anything else that I own. I don't use the legal drugs, either--I've never smoked a cigarette, my use of alcohol has been limited to communion wine and a couple of sips of champagne. I don't even like to take aspirin when I have a headache.

So when someone insinuates that I've been, I don't know what, drug-running? my reflex reactions are to become indignant, and to laugh.

I laughed.

Uh-oh, I thought again. I turned toward him to look him in the eye and give him my sincerest "No," and that's when I noticed the guns that were securely locked in their upright position, three inches from my head.

"So if I were to search your car, I wouldn't find any contraband?" No, he wouldn't. "Would you mind if I searched your car?"

Sigh.

Obviously I'd mind if he searched my car, but I had a feeling it would take less of my time to let my car be searched than it would to refuse. "If you really want to," I said.

So he searched my car. He had some trouble with the car alarm transmitter on my keychain, so I had to sit in the squad car and re-disarm the alarm each time it looked like he was about to try to open another door. He pulled out my suitcases, opened them up, browsed through my clean laundry and my travel-sized toiletries. Curiously, he didn't open any of my instrument cases, so I guess now I know where to keep all the drugs I have no intention of transporting.

Eventually he motioned for me to get out of the squad car and take my vehicle defect card. He had one more hope of busting me, but he already knew he'd lost--"So those CDs in the back," the box full of identical CDs with my name on them, "did you make those?" Amazingly, I was confused by this (I didn't manufacture them), but we straightened it out, and then I was free to go.

So, yeah, as stories of police harassment go, I'm aware this is pretty mild. I got my car searched for having long hair and a messy back seat. It was an invasion of my privacy, but it probably cost me half an hour at most. (It felt like hours.) The worst effect was that I had to spend the rest of the day driving alone down the highway muttering to myself about what I could have, should have done or said to somehow handle the whole thing better. But it was enough to make me never want to go to Nebraska again.