Steyn enters the fray;

And that’s my biggest problem with “law-&-order conservatives”: They seem to think when the coppers are kicking around Mike Brock, that just shows they’re doing their job. Au contraire, the ten minutes they’re kicking around Mike Brock is ten minutes they’re not doing their job, ten minutes they’re not devoting to the guys they should be kicking around – just as pulling over the octogenarian nun for secondary screening doesn’t demonstrate the rigor of homeland security but rather the waste of limited resources.

Except that he wasn’t “kicked” around. He was asked, rudely, for his ID and to surrender his backpack for a search – an egregious case of police being “insufficiently polite”. By his own account, there were no witnesses. But also by his own account,

The reason I said that, is because they seemed to be criticizing me as if they were aware of some sort of political positions I held without me having saying anything to them. It almost makes me think they were monitoring Twitter or something. Because I had indicated on Twitter where I was minutes earlier.

Okie… dokie.
Mark overlooked linking to my original commentary whilst summing it for his readers, so I’ll reply with my own last word here by repeating something I told Jay Currie when he declared, “Deference to Authority is not dead. And if you want to see it in action, SDA is the spot. Sad really, but there you are.”
No one HERE handed over his backpack – he did. If you have a problem with “Deference to Authority”, take it up with the Deferrer.
I have plenty of respect for people who defend their rights when they think they’ve being violated. In Mike’s case, though, he didn’t, did he?
He submitted his papers and his sack, and then scurried back to his ‘puter fast as his legs could carry him, to set in motion his very own libertarian pity party.
Paper Marxists, digital libertarians. Two sides of the same coin, I’m afraid.
(Ahem. This is sort of interesting.)

“… I was nowhere near a protest.”

Addendum: What seems to have been missed by some commentators is that while Mike has spent considerable effort here and in other venues, portraying himself as an innocent disinterested citizen inexplicably detained by roving police, his Twitter record suggests something quite different: that not only was he following police movements in the minutes before the encounter, but that his attitude towards their activity is arguably hostile. (See this one, as well.) To make matters worse, the Twitter post and the Shotgun account, posted within mere minutes of each other, include a direct quote that undergoes a not-so-subtle transformation, a “sexing up”, if you will.
Perhaps there’s a reasonable explanation for the discrepancies, I don’t know. I’ve never had a reason to doubt Mike Brock, nor do I hold any animosity towards those who support him. But for me it comes down to “who to believe – he, or my own lyin’ eyes?”
Either way, one thing is certain. When it comes to throwing in my lot with someone on the strength of his word, this isn’t the molehill to die on.