America's Finest at Work, Part II

The men and women who guard the nation's borders will stop at nothing to keep us safe. Last September, they kept a British musicologist out of the U.S. And earlier this week, U.S. Customs detained (and eventually deported) a British memoirist.

Sebastian Horsley wasn't kept out of the U.S. for any of the normal reasons: it wasn't because he's British, and nobody suspects him of having dabbled in music scholarship. The problem was his memoir Dandy in the Underworld, in which he admits to having spent over £100,000 on crack cocaine and an equal amount on prostitutes.* The New York Times quoted a Customs spokesperson as saying that under the rules allowing Britons to enter the U.S. without visas, British travelers may be denied entry if they have admitted to a drug addiction or have been convicted of a crime "involving moral turpitude."

*Normally I defer to the wisdom of law enforcement, but with the government desperate to jump-start consumer spending, is this really the sort of man we can afford to keep out?