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Latest Articles: U.S. Constitution
Students Make A Video Depicting A School Shooting; Sheriff Decides Everyone Needs To Have Their Rights Violated
Post Date: 2019-01-02 06:50:36 by Deckard
9 Comments
from the if-he's-lucky,-he'll-only-face-one-lawsuit deptHeightened sensitivities and a law enforcement track record of overreaction has prompted a New York Sheriff's Office into actions that will probably result in at least one civil rights lawsuit. When students of a New York school decided to create a couple of videos and post them to Instagram, the Sheriff felt compelled to violate the students' Fourth Amendment rights after disregarding their First Amendment rights. Three students face felony charges of making a terroristic threat for posting online two brief videos where they act out a school shooting in someone’s house.[...]The Albany County Sheriff’s Office ...
Kansas Supreme Court Says Cops Can Search A House Without A Warrant As Long As They Claim They Smelled Marijuana
Post Date: 2018-12-16 10:58:46 by Deckard
17 Comments
from the I-love-the-smell-of-exigency-in-the-morning deptThe Kansas Supreme Court has just given cops a pass to treat residents' homes like cars on public roads. Being in a car greatly diminishes your Fourth Amendment protections and many a warrantless search has been salvaged by an officer (or a dog) testifying they "smelled marijuana" before tearing the car apart. Unlike a car on a public road, a person's home has traditionally been given the utmost in Fourth Amendment protections. The bar to search a home is higher than the bar to search a vehicle. Cops aren't supposed to be walking up to windows to peek inside. Nor at they supposed to hang out by the door, hoping ...
The Irony of a Congressman's Proposal to Exempt Police from His “Assault Weapons” Ban
Post Date: 2018-12-09 10:23:29 by Deckard
1 Comments
If the intent is to reduce deaths by firearms, then law enforcement should be the first to hand in their “assault weapons.” In May of 2018, Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) wrote an opinion column for USA Today in which he called for significant increases in gun control following the murder of Gary Jackson, a 28-year-old security guard from Oakland, California, whose killer was armed with an “AK-47-style semi-automatic assault rifle.” Swalwell was the prosecutor in the case, and his exposure to Jackson’s autopsy reports emboldened him to seek significant gun control legislation at the federal level. Invoking the justification-induced power of the pronoun we, ...
Heil Fuhrer Trump! [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2018-11-30 09:45:21 by Deckard
45 Comments
So Trump is all set to do his ban on “bump stocks.” Let’s look at a few aspects of this: 1 – This is not being done by legislation. It is being unilaterally done, dictator-style, by just declaring bump-stocks to fit within the definition of what is already “illegal,” in direct contrast to the DOJ’s own prior interpretation of the law, going back for decades. In other words, Trump is declaring that what the ATF and DOJ thought the law meant before wasn’t authoritarian and controlling enough. (Incidentally, he could just as easily do the same thing with tri-burst trigger assemblies next.) 2 – Unlike the misnamed 1994 ...
Indiana Solicitor General: It's Constitutional to Seize a Car for Driving 5 MPH Over the Speed Limit
Post Date: 2018-11-29 06:49:39 by Deckard
3 Comments
Civil asset forfeiture is such a farce that it took Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer only about 100 words to twist Indiana's solicitor general into admitting that his state could have the power to seize cars over something as insubstantial as driving 5 miles-per-hour over the speed limit. Yes, really. But let's back up. On Wednesday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Timbs v. Indiana, a case that could have huge ramifications for the way states and local governments use civil asset forfeiture to target the property of suspected criminals. As most Reason readers are probably aware, asset forfeiture is the process by which law enforcement can seize cars, cash, ...
Yes, You Have the Right to Talk Back to the Government, But It Could Get You Killed
Post Date: 2018-11-28 09:07:28 by Deckard
1 Comments
“The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.”— Justice William J. Brennan, City of Houston v. Hill What the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line. What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to ...
Court To Law Enforcement: You Can't Seize A House For 15 Hours Before Obtaining A Warrant
Post Date: 2018-11-22 08:57:19 by Deckard
3 Comments
from the because-reasons...-a-lot-of-them deptWhen you violate the Fourth Amendment so hard it practically becomes the Third Amendment. (via FourthAmendment.com) Local law enforcement seized Defendant’s home around 7:00 a.m. Defendant spent the next two and a half hours at the police station speaking with Investigator Cooke and others. About 9:30 a.m., Defendant signed a limited consent to search form outside his home authorizing Investigator Cooke to enter the home and retrieve Candice’s medication. Cooke completed his search of Defendant’s home around 10:00 a.m. By 11:30 a.m. Cooke possessed sufficient knowledge to procure a search warrant. He knew Defendant was a convicted ...
The “Crime” of “Suspicion”
Post Date: 2018-11-21 11:44:23 by Deckard
1 Comments
It used to be that you had to be suspected of a crime before armed government workers could force you to even speak with them. Now, they can just say you’re “suspicious.” This is handy – like “climate change” – because it can mean almost anything. There is no way to disprove the assertion of “suspicion.” You just are – if an AGW says you are. The video above illustrates how it works. A man named Keilon Hill is walking through a neighborhood when he is approached by an AGW who tells him “someone” called in to report a “suspicious” man. No assertion, even, that anything illegal has happened. Hill is calm and ...
The 5 Worst Supreme Court Rulings of the Past 50 Years
Post Date: 2018-11-19 07:53:06 by Deckard
38 Comments
Cases in which a majority of the Court fell down on the job.James Madison once said that the job of the U.S. Supreme Court was to act as "an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive." Unfortunately, the justices have not always seen their role in the same light. Here are five cases from the past five decades in which a majority of the Court fell down on the job. 1. Smith v. Maryland (1979) The Fourth Amendment guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." But according to the Supreme Court's 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, ...
Where Does the Constitution Call for Black-Robed Dictators?
Post Date: 2018-11-16 09:06:18 by Deckard
2 Comments
Ever since 1865 discussions of constitutionalism have assumed that the supreme court justices should be viewed as black-robed deities with a monopoly on constitutional interpretation. That is the nationalist view of constitutionalism championed by Hamilton, Marshall, Story, Webster, Lincoln, and all of their political descendants. In his book on the Constitution, written while he was still a Princeton professor, Woodrow Wilson celebrated the fact that the “Civil War” finally forced (literally at gunpoint) this statist superstition on the entire nation. The opposing Jeffersonian position was that if the day ever came when five government lawyer/political hacks with lifetime ...
DOJ OLC Memo Re Designating an Acting Attorney General (14 Nov 2018) (Matthew Whitaker)
Post Date: 2018-11-14 13:02:24 by nolu chan
7 Comments
DOJ OLC Memo Re Designating an Acting Attorney General (14 Nov 2018) (Matthew Whitaker) U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal CounselWashington, D.C. 20530 November 14, 2018 MEMORANDUM FOR EMMET T. FLOOD COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT Re: Designating an Acting Attorney General After Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions III resigned on November 7, 2018, the President designated Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to the Attorney General, to act temporarily as the Attorney General under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, 5 U.S.C. §§ 3345-3349d. This Office had previously advised that the President could designate a senior Department of Justice ...
Matthew Whitaker is a crackpot
Post Date: 2018-11-09 11:06:57 by Willie Green
17 Comments
The acting attorney general of the United States is a crackpot.Matthew G. Whitaker, installed in the job by President Trump to replace Jeff Sessions, was asked in 2014, during an ill-fated run in the Republican senatorial primary in Iowa, about the worst decisions in the Supreme Court’s history. Whitaker’s answer, to an Iowa blog called Caffeinated Thoughts, was chilling.“There are so many,” he replied. “I would start with the idea of Marbury v. Madison. That’s probably a good place to start and the way it’s looked at the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of constitutional issues. We’ll move forward from there. All New Deal cases that were expansive ...
New York Lawmakers Want Social Media History To Be Included In Gun Background Checks
Post Date: 2018-11-08 08:20:04 by Deckard
1 Comments
from the get-you-a-constitutional-violation-that-can-do-both deptLegislation arising from tragedies is almost uniformly bad. One need only look at the domestic surveillance growth industry kick started by the Patriot Act to see that fear-based legislation works out very badly for constituents. A few New York lawmakers are reacting to the horrific Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a gun control bill that makes zero sense. Expanding on criminal background checks, these legislators are hoping to give law enforcement the opportunity to dig through gun buyers' online history. Eric Adams, the president of Brooklyn Borough, and state Senator Kevin Palmer are ...
Home Resident Killed by Maryland Police Trying Confiscate His Guns
Post Date: 2018-11-06 05:44:01 by Deckard
2 Comments
Anne Arundel County, Maryland – -(AmmoLand.com)- Foxbaltimore.com is reporting that a Maryland resident was killed by police as they tried to enforce a “Red Flag Gun Confiscation Order” at 5:17 am in the morning on Monday, November 5th, 2018.Information is incomplete at this time but according to Fox Baltimore;“Anne Arundel County Police are investigating an officer-involved shooting that occurred Monday morning in Ferndale.Police spokesman Jacklyn Davis said officers responded to 103 Linwood Avenue at around 5:15 a.m. to serve an “emergency risk protective order,” also known as the red flag order.The man answered the door armed with a handgun and a struggle ...
Cop Sued For Bogus Arrest Of Man Who Broke Up The PD's Distracted Driving Sting
Post Date: 2018-11-02 09:33:41 by Deckard
10 Comments
from the local-man-arrested-for-making-streets-safer dept A cop couldn't handle someone diverting his revenue stream. So he decided to do something about it. That "something" was getting sued for civil rights violations. How this will improve revenue generation remains to be seen, but for now one officer of the Stamford, Connecticut police department will need to lawyer up. (via Courthouse News Service) The plaintiff, Michael Friend, happened to notice a bunch of police officers issuing tickets to drivers for distracted driving. One officer, Richard Gasparino, was hiding behind a telephone pole on the other side of the street looking for drivers using their cellphones and ...
Does the Fourteenth Amendment Require Birthright Citizenship?
Post Date: 2018-11-02 08:57:03 by A K A Stone
7 Comments
Poster Comment:No doubt birthright citizenship is NOT required by the fourteenth amendment.
Wave of Burning Man-Related Drug Arrests Won't Go to Trial
Post Date: 2018-11-01 06:40:42 by Deckard
6 Comments
District Attorney finds too many questionable stop and search practices in campaign of harassment aimed at Burners.As reported here back in August, a cabal of federal and state agencies conducted a campaign of onerously harassing car stops and subsequent drug arrests on the main road heading to the Burning Man festival in the weeks ramping up to its start. This is Burning Man book cover Many of those stopped, and the Burning Man organization itself, made noise, complaining that there were obvious Fourth Amendment issues raised by the excuses for the stops and the subsequent dog-triggered searches, ticketing, and arrests. The feds insisted the Burning Man connection was pure coincidence, and ...
Appeals Court: Police can violate our rights without fear of being sued
Post Date: 2018-10-27 16:00:49 by Deckard
3 Comments
For those of you that claim we don’t live in a police state, I give you this recent Michigan Appeals Court ruling. In 2015, Deputy James Dawson went to Joshua Brennan’s home and knocked on his door trying to obtain a breath sample. When Brennan did not answer, Dawson spent an hour and a half knocking at his doors and windows. Officer Dawson also put crime-scene tape over Brennan’s security cameras to conceal his actions and used his siren and cruiser lights in an attempt to rouse him. When Brennan finally opened his door, officer Dawson forced him to take a breathalyzer and arrested him for a probation violation even though he blew a 0.000. All of this was done without a ...
Creating a Suspect Society: The Scary Side of the Technological Police State
Post Date: 2018-10-03 11:03:09 by Deckard
0 Comments
“If, as it seems, we are in the process of becoming a totalitarian society in which the state apparatus is all-powerful, the ethics most important for the survival of the true, free, human individual would be: cheat, lie, evade, fake it, be elsewhere, forge documents, build improved electronic gadgets in your garage that’ll outwit the gadgets used by the authorities.”—Philip K. Dick It’s a given that Big Brother is always watching us. Unfortunately, thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Big Brother (and his corporate partners in crime) is getting even creepier ...
Giving Cops The Finger Is Protected Speech, Says Another Federal Court
Post Date: 2018-09-28 10:08:41 by Deckard
1 Comments
from the learn-faster,-idiots deptAnother federal court has given its official approval of flipping the bird to cops. This isn't to say it's a wise idea, just a Constitutional one. Extending the middle finger is protected speech. Detentions or arrests that follow bird-flipping are usually unsupported by any of things officers need to have on hand (probable cause, reasonable suspicion, etc.) to deprive someone of their liberty. Other cops have argued the hand gesture that pissed them off so much they broke the Constitution is some sort of universal distress signal. The ensuing interaction wasn't about being offended, but rather their outsized concern someone in the vehicle might ...
Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley to File Court Injunction to STOP Kavanaugh Vote
Post Date: 2018-09-26 15:55:28 by nolu chan
7 Comments
Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley to File Court Injunction to STOP Kavanaugh Vote by Brock Simmons Gateway Pundit September 26, 2018 Desperate to stop any progress that Trump makes, far left senator from Oregon, Jeff Merkley, now plans on filing a lawsuit to stop the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation vote. Perhaps Merkley knows that all of the Kavanaugh accusations have no substance, so this is a last ditch effort to try to stop Trump. [snip] - - - - - - - - - - Poster comment: desperate socialist Dems are funny to watch.
September 25th is Bill Of Rights Day - How Many Rights Have Americans REALLY Lost?
Post Date: 2018-09-26 07:46:00 by Deckard
13 Comments
Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.comHow Many Constitutional Freedoms Do We Still Have? Preface: While a lot of people talk about the loss of our Constitutional liberties, people usually speak in a vague, generalized manner … or focus on only one issue and ignore the rest. This post explains the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution – and provides a scorecard on the extent of the loss of each right. First Amendment The 1st Amendment protects speech, religion, assembly and the press: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or ...
Handling an AGW (Armed Government Worker)
Post Date: 2018-09-24 13:06:16 by Deckard
2 Comments
Eric Peters Autos – by Eric Here’s a top-shelf video of a man countering the make-up-a-law-and-enforce-it routine of an armed government worker in Florida. The man is accosted by the AGW who (like a lot of AGWs) obviously does not like legal open carry. The AGW says he “just wants to make sure everything’s all right.” The man replies by pointing out that it is. No crime – or even “violation” of statute – has been committed and the AGW cannot explain why he has accosted the man… other than to repeat the mantra about “making sure everything’s all right.” The AGW pesters the man with obnoxious (because none ...
Suspending the Constitution: In America Today, the Government Does Whatever It Wants
Post Date: 2018-09-18 17:04:00 by Deckard
0 Comments
“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.”—Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document. The reality we must come to terms with, however, is that in the America we live in today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. “We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a ...
Trump Administration Decides Free Speech Isn't Free: Publishes Plans to Tax Protests and Close White House Sidewalk to Protests [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2018-09-14 19:42:00 by Deckard
95 Comments
(Global Research) In a major reversal of long-standing federal policy, the Trump Administration has issued a new plan to charge demonstrators for the right to use our public parks, sidewalk, and streets that are on federal land in the nation’s capital for First Amendment activity. Among other areas, this includes the National Mall, Lafayette Park, the Lincoln Memorial and the sidewalk in front of the Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. The federal Pay-to-Protest in DC plan includes charging demonstrators for the cost of barricades and fencing erected at the discretion of police; salaries of personnel deployed to monitor the protest; trash removal ...
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