'This is a country, not a country club.'

This is really disturbing.

Sebastian Horsley, a British author who has written an eyebrow-raising memoir detailing a life of rampant drug use and voluminous encounters with prostitutes, was turned back at Newark Liberty International Airport on Tuesday as he tried to enter the United States for a book party and New York news media tour.

Lucille Cirillo, a spokeswoman for the New York office of United States Customs and Border Protection, said she could not comment on specific cases. But in an e-mail message, she said that under a waiver program that allows British citizens to enter the United States without a visa, "travelers who have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude (which includes controlled-substance violations) or admit to previously having a drug addiction are not admissible."...read on

I was going to opine on this at length, but I'll let Arthur Silber elaborate:

I appreciate Horsley's irony in the face of injustice. It should go without saying that in light of the metastasizing American surveillance state and the numerous ways in which individual liberty is destroyed daily in this country, to say nothing of the Horsley story itself, "land of the free" is now the dream that has gone.

Finally, consider the following. Sebastian Horsley is a private citizen, who happens to have written a book. He was detained for eight hours, questioned extensively about personal behavior that is not criminal by any reasonable and valid standard, and then sent packing back to London. Your kind is not wanted here, he was told. And the United States government used its considerable power to enforce its judgment...read on