When the day comes that all but the most deluded must acknowledge that the United States has become a country unlike the one that stood against totalitarianism in the last century, nobody will be able to claim there weren’t warning signs.  To pick just a few examples from a very long list during the past few years, the United States is a country in which a film maker finds himself scooped up by police in the middle of the night, apparently as a cover-up to the administration’s ineptitude in a foreign country, authorities raid the homes of people connected to a particular politician, apparently as a political attack, the IRS targets grassroots groups of a particular political persuasion, apparently in an effort to blunt their effectiveness during election season, and prosecutors go after a governor and presidential possible under the pretense that he used his veto power illicitly.

It’s not surprising, in this atmosphere, to see an activist/journalist who conducted undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood have his home raided and his computers and videos confiscated for careful review by politicians and bureaucrats who are sure to be favorably disposed to the abortion mills he exposed as trafficking in the body parts of the babies they’d killed:

Authorities seized a laptop and multiple hard drives from his Orange County apartment, Daleiden said in an email. The equipment contained all of the video Daleiden had filmed as part of his 30-month project, “including some very damning footage that has yet to be released to the public,” he said.

A spokeswoman for California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) said she could not comment on an ongoing investigation. But the raid confirms that California is among the states looking into possible criminal activity on the part of Daleiden and his organization, the Center for Medical Progress, which have been the center of controversy since releasing videos purporting to show that Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal tissue for a profit.

Two lessons for people who might fall on the same side of the political divide as Daleiden and who might be considering similar approaches to making the world a better, more just, place:  Think carefully about the state and region of your base of operations, and ensure that copies of your work are well dispersed if you don’t release it all to the public from the start.