An environmentallist and community liasion officer for the Attorney General's office, Willie Fontenot was talking to some students on a sidewalk while those student took pictures of a refinery. Security guards from the refinery and a sherif showed up and said that Fontenot had to hand over identification (for example, driver licenses) of all the students in the name of homeland security.

Nevermind whether or not the sheriff is allowed to demand identification, even if Fontenot wanted to cooperate, he didn't have the authority to do that, as he was just talking to the students from as an adult speaking to a group of adults. He didn't organize this, and he isn't leading a school outing or anything like that. So he was forced to resign.

Another NEL story: Fox news is reporting that the police tackled some guy who was standing next to some bags outside of the U.S. Capitol Building. Now I'm not familiar with American law, so maybe Fox is assuming I know something that I don't, but nowhere in the story do is there any indication of the man doing anything illegal, and yet the story applauded the action of the police officers.

The unidentified man stood with his back to police officers as they approached him. Apparently not responding to requests to cooperate, the officers ran up to tackle him and then carried him away.

Some spectators applauded as police dragged the man away.

Before the standoff ended, Capitol police spokesman Michael Lauer said the man had not said anything to police.

The man had stood silently between the two bags, an act that led authorities to evacuate part of the Capitol. Bomb squad officers were inspecting the bags.

[...]

After the incident, Reid praised the Capitol Police officers' performance.

"What they did to get ready to take that man down was extraordinary," Reid said. "We have the finest- trained police force of any place in the country."

So my interpretation of the story is this: Some guy was standing next to two bags, which may or may not even been his. He didn't say anything or do anything. A police officer snuck up behind him and tackled him, and the police officer is praised for his perfomance. Is it illegal in the states now to stand between two bags in front of a government building? The story says they suspected there might have been a bomb in the bags, but it's quite curious that the story doesn't follow up with "And after searching the bags, they discovered that yes, indeed, there really was a bomb in the bag" or "After searching the bag, they found no traces of a bomb, but still they fined the guy". They sort of just stop talking about it.