dailycaller.com A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed. … A search warrant … indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home. The document notes that her husband, Paul Flanagan, pleaded guilty in 1986 to resisting arrest in Prince George’s County. The warrant called for police to search the residence they share and seize all weapons and ammunition because he is prohibited under the law from possessing firearms. But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security After the search began … she was asked by an investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service [ under Homeland Security ] if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times over the last decade. The Coast Guard operates under the Department of Homeland Security.

I'll lead with the caveat that "we don't know the whole story yet".

Caveat aside, this sounds really really bad.

1) In 1986 a man committed a crime and was punished for it.

2) Today, a quarter of a century later, the man's house gets raided by a tactical team…and a Department of Homeland Security investigator.

3) …and the investigator asks if the woman has been criticizing the Department of Homeland Security in print

4) files relating to the Department of Homeland Security are seized, despite the warrant not specifying them.

The phrase "police state" gets thrown around a lot. I've got a long post on the topic of "what is a police state, and are we in one?" queued up. For now though I'll say two things:

1) police states aren't boolean: there are shades of corruption and danger in between "Stalinist hell" and "Libertarian Utopia".

2) whether this raid is what it looks like or not, I really don't like the direction this country has been going for the last ( 10 / 20 / 40 ) years.

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