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Latest Articles: U.S. Constitution
Cops stop woman praying at home, case goes to Supremes
Post Date: 2018-02-02 09:00:27 by Deckard
33 Comments
The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to overturn a 10th Circuit appeals-court ruling that upheld the actions of police officers who forced a woman to stop praying silently in her home. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-BTF_SKY_3'); }); The petition charges the Louisberg, Kansas, officers stopped Mary Anne Sause from praying not to further any legitimate law-enforcement interest, but “so they could harass her.” “The 10th Circuit correctly ‘assumed’ this conduct ‘violated Sause’s rights under the First Amendment,'” the woman’s legal team explained. “Yet the 10th ...
Equality, Justice, and Freedom: A Constitutional Perspective
Post Date: 2018-01-28 20:13:17 by buckeroo
9 Comments
Implementing policies like those proposed by Thomas Piketty would undermine the government’s legitimacy, which depends on the limits to its powers. The publication of Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) has raised awareness of the rising inequality of income and wealth. The author argues that such inequality threatens democratic values and should be reversed by imposing steeply progressive income and wealth taxes on the rich and near-rich. His policies, if implemented, would create more equal outcomes but undermine the principles of freedom and justice that are the essence of the U.S. Constitution. The notion of equality is central to ...
THE ETHICAL TROUBLE WITH LEGISLATING MORALITY
Post Date: 2018-01-26 14:14:18 by tpaine
14 Comments
THE ETHICAL TROUBLE WITH LEGISLATING MORALITY by David Trillo, “You can’t legislate morality!” Few colloquial expressions depend more upon connotation than does this short, forceful proclamation of liberty. And because it asserts liberty, few colloquialisms have weathered such a long, sustained, unrelenting campaign to discredit it, refute it and extinguish it from American parlance. Most everyone knows what the expression means. It means that we don’t, or shouldn’t, legislate moral beliefs based solely in tradition or religious beliefs. Unfortunately, people and groups who wish to do exactly that have been attacking this axiom of freedom ever since. Here I ...
The Heart of the Constitution
Post Date: 2018-01-21 03:22:01 by tpaine
17 Comments
The Heart of the Constitution,” by Gerard Magliocca (Oxford University Press) Every week, Americans are confronted with a growing sense of political and economic crisis, from the inequalities of the new economy to renewed debates about racial and gender discrimination to fresh stresses on our political institutions. During periods of crisis, the Constitution can provide a backstop, spelling out foundational rules and rights that offer a bulwark against the vicissitudes of politics. But the meaning of the Constitution can change precisely during these moments of pressure and flux. In his timely new book, “The Heart of the Constitution,” Gerard N. Magliocca highlights how a ...
Why you should care about the warrantless surveillance bill on its way to Trump’s desk
Post Date: 2018-01-18 17:03:02 by Hondo68
1 Comments
After debate ended in a close cloture vote on Tuesday, the Senate has voted to pass a bill that will renew one of the NSA’s most controversial practices for another six years. The bill, known as the FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017 or S.139, provides for an extension of the U.S. government’s practice of collecting the private communications of American citizens when they are to communicating with a foreign target. The six year renewal passed in a 65-34 vote. Over the course of its long path toward renewal, the bill faced vocal opposition from privacy advocates. Many argue that Section 702 violates the Fourth Amendment’s provision forbidding unreasonable searches ...
Police Tell Student Activists Their “Free Speech” is Scaring Other Students
Post Date: 2018-01-15 08:23:10 by Deckard
0 Comments
By Jack Burns In yet another test of the U.S. Constitution’s protected freedom of speech, the Constitution Club at Southern Illinois University (SIU) inflated a giant beach ball and asked students to come by, grab a sharpie, and write whatever they felt like writing on the ball. The students’ free speech rights exercise was quickly interrupted by campus police who informed the club members they had received complaints about the ball and the group would need to stop their activities. According to Campus Reform, the reason SIU chose to attempt to stop the demonstration was that campus police said the students did not go through the proper channels to be able to hold the ...
Federalists Can’t Support a Cannabis Crackdown
Post Date: 2018-01-11 08:13:42 by Deckard
0 Comments
That includes the president, who said marijuana legalization "should be up to the states." Before last Thursday, state-licensed marijuana merchants operated in a highly uncertain legal environment, subject to the whims of federal prosecutors who could at any moment decide to shut them down, take their property, and send them to prison. Now that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has clarified the Justice Department's policy regarding the cannabis industry, state-licensed marijuana merchants operate in a highly uncertain legal environment, subject to the whims of federal prosecutors who could at any moment decide to shut them down, take their property, and send them to prison. ...
Congress Plotting to Cut a Hole in the 4th Amendment, Again
Post Date: 2018-01-11 07:32:34 by Deckard
1 Comments
Hidden beneath the controversy stirred up last week by the publication of a book called “Fire and Fury,” a highly critical insider’s view of the Trump White House that the president has not only denounced on national television but also tried to prevent from being published and distributed, are the efforts of the Trump administration and congressional leadership to bypass the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Here is the back story. After the excesses of the Watergate era, during which the Nixon administration used the FBI and the CIA unlawfully to spy without warrants on the president’s real and imagined domestic political opponents, Congress passed the Foreign ...
Amash, Paul, and Others Trying to Stop Congress from Expanding Domestic Surveillance Powers (FISA Reauthorization)
Post Date: 2018-01-10 18:14:39 by Hondo68
15 Comments
House to vote on a bill that would codify unwarranted searches of Americans' communications. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Newscom Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and a bipartisan group of 42 lawmakers are going to try to stop Congress from expanding the feds' ability to snoop on American citizens. If they fail, Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is threatening a filibuster in the Senate. This week the House is considering legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments. This law grants intelligence agencies the authority to snoop on foreign targets on foreign soil without warrants, overseen by a secretive FISA court. This is done in the name of stopping ...
Why Ruby Ridge Still Matters
Post Date: 2018-01-10 06:21:46 by Deckard
3 Comments
In the wake of violent clashes between protesters last August in Charlottesville, many people demanded a federal crackdown on suspected dangerous extremists. The federal government has previously carried out similar heavy-handed suppression efforts with disastrous results. Rather than intellectually purifying the nation, such efforts are far more likely to turn nitwits into martyrs. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Washington’s efforts to stomp out bad ideas spawned federal crime waves. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program utterly exempted itself from the Constitution and federal, state, and local laws. The FBI set up its own 250-member Klan organization “to attract membership away ...
Just Say No to Jeff Sessions
Post Date: 2018-01-09 08:39:20 by Deckard
32 Comments
Attorney General Jeff Sessions kicked off the New Year by reversing the Obama-era guidance for federal prosecutors to limit their enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use. In what is almost certainly not a coincidence, Sessions’ announcement came days after California’s law legalizing recreational marijuana sales went into effect. Sessions’ action thus runs counter to the wishes of the majority of the people in the most populous US state, as well the people of the 28 other states (and DC) that have legalized some form of marijuana use. Federal laws criminalizing marijuana and other drugs have failed to ...
It Did What it Was Written to Do
Post Date: 2018-01-08 09:46:25 by Deckard
5 Comments
A great many people – especially conservatives – reverence the Constitution, consider that it has been abused and that if only the doctrines expressed within were revived and respected, all would be well with America again. This, of course, is a kind of children’s bedtime story – and approximates reality to about the same degree as the story of the Three Little Pigs. The Constitution was peddled and imposed on us by men like Alexander Hamilton, a grasper after power who very openly loathed the ideas expressed by men like Jefferson in his Declaration (and even more so in his Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions). Hamilton and his faction – they were called ...
State Police Tell Medical Marijuana Patients to Turn in Their Guns Or Be Arrested
Post Date: 2018-01-05 06:40:11 by Deckard
2 Comments
Pennsylvania — It is entirely legal in the state of Pennsylvania to use and possess marijuana so long as the user has a valid issued patient Medical Marijuana Card. Also, there is no law in Pennsylvania that states medical marijuana patients have to turn in their guns. However, the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) care not about state laws and have issued a statement demanding anyone with a Medical Marijuana Card turn in their guns—or you are in violation of the law—therefore you will be arrested. While the state of Pennsylvania has no law on the books that forces legal marijuana patients to turn in their guns, the state police are ignoring state’s rights and ...
Sessions begins his war on pot [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2018-01-04 10:31:43 by Willie Green
47 Comments
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions is rescinding the Obama-era policy that had paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country, two people with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press. Sessions will instead let federal prosecutors where pot is legal decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law, the people said. The people familiar with the plan spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it before an announcement expected Thursday. The move by President Donald Trump’s attorney general likely will add to confusion about whether it’s OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states ...
Ross Ulbricht Files Appeal to the Supreme Court on His Life Sentence Without Parole
Post Date: 2017-12-31 17:54:10 by Hondo68
1 Comments
Ross Ulbricht was sentenced in May 2015 to life in prison without parole for various crimes connected to his launching the darkweb sales site Silk Road. In May of this year, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his conviction and his grossly disproportionate sentencing. Ulbricht has now appealed the Second Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court. Kannon K. Shanmugam, the lawyer managing the appeal, summed up the legal issues that require settling by the Supreme Court in a December memo to potential amici in the case. Even those who might never dream of launching a darkweb site facilitating possibly illegal substance sales should be very worried about how the government convicted ...
Activist Proves Power of Telling Cops, ‘I Don’t Answer Questions’—’It’s Cop Repellent’
Post Date: 2017-12-27 08:15:28 by Deckard
10 Comments
Kenny Suitter never surrenders his 5th Amendment Right to remain silent. His numerous recorded encounters with police, in which he answers cop inquiries with “I don’t answer questions” have racked up millions of views. Now, in an instructional YouTube video, Suitter explains his motivations and teaches everyone how to handle each and every police encounter. He explains exactly what “I don’t answer questions” means: It means exactly what it says. It means you shouldn’t answer questions, zero, not one, nada, zilch. Suitter says the reason why you shouldn’t answer one solitary question posed to you by police is very simple, yet it has everything to do ...
Living Breathing” or a Standard of Liberty?
Post Date: 2017-12-25 17:51:14 by tpaine
1 Comments
“Living Breathing” or a Standard of Liberty? When a woman asked Benjamin Franklin, a founder of our Constitutional Republic, what kind of government the States created, he answered, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” The key to keeping that Republic exists in the understanding how the Constitution was designed to function. The Constitution of these United States is not arbitrary. It is a document of standards established to keep the GOVERNMENT from becoming arbitrary. These standards were not invented by the men who wrote the Constitution. These standards were axiomatic truths that had proven themselves for over a millennium. Many of these truths can be found in ...
Rand Paul puts hold on Trump nominee over surveillance concerns
Post Date: 2017-12-23 20:03:46 by Hondo68
25 Comments
© Getty Images Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is putting a hold on one of President Trump's picks to the Justice Department over concerns about the nominee's views on warrantless wiretaps and surveillance, The Daily Beast reported.Paul, who sits on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has temporarily blocked John Demers's nomination to be assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division. The position is one of three in the Justice Department with the authority to issue Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, which allow the government to conduct surveillance on non-American targets outside the United ...
DOJ Wants Protesters & Reporter Convicted For 'Hiding Behind The First Amendment'
Post Date: 2017-12-15 19:25:35 by Deckard
1 Comments
from the protect-and-defend-the-constitution dept Employees of the federal government swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Assistant US Attorney Rizwan Qureshi must have done that as well. And, among the parts of the Constitution he's supposed to defend is the First Amendment. But, as a lawyer for the DOJ he has a job to do -- and apparently sometimes that job includes making batshit insane arguments to try to throw protesters and a reporter in jail against their basic First Amendment rights to assemble and to report. This is the case against six people who were singled out and prosecuted, among hundreds of people arrested during protests around Donald Trump's ...
From Duty to be Armed to Permission to Carry (Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 - HR 38)
Post Date: 2017-12-11 14:28:21 by Hondo68
18 Comments
“If the central government has the authority to tell a state it must accept permits from all the other states, then it also has the authority to tell a state it may not accept a concealed permit from any other states. If the central government can do these things it can set up a national concealed carry permit scheme and in essence bring into existence a national arms registry. That is exactly where this is headed.” -Attorney Richard D. Fry 1 Some are touting the federal Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 (HR 38) as a bill which would expand our right to carry. But if you will walk with me for a few minutes, I’ll show you a better path to take. Let us look at the ...
Don't Talk to the Police
Post Date: 2017-12-10 18:25:05 by A K A Stone
3 Comments
Regent Law Professor James Duane gives viewers startling reasons why they should always exercise their 5th Amendment rights when questioned by government officials. Download his article on the topic at https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&v=d- 7o9xYp7eE&q=http%3A%2F%2Fpapers.ssrn.com%2Fsol3%2Fpapers.cfm%3Fabstract_id%3D1998 119&redir_token=IM1SZmcQ53z-GNySplugvFEgUXx8MTUxMzAzNDM4OEAxNTEyOTQ3OTg4
Cop-Hater Trump Attacked by Law Enforcement Over Anti-FBI Tweets
Post Date: 2017-12-04 11:08:13 by Deckard
9 Comments
Former and current law enforcement officials have condemned President Donald Trump’s accusation that his FBI’s reputation is in “tatters.”In a dozen Tweets over the weekend Trump attacked America’s top law enforcement agency, saying its reputation is “in tatters—worst in history!” and vowed to “bring it back to greatness.”Trump’s attacks followed a guilty plea Friday by his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for lying to the law enforcement agency. The president retweeted a message that the FBI Director Chris Wray “needs to clean house.” Trump fired the former FBI director James Comey in May.Flynn is the fourth ...
Drug Dog Testing Process Eliminates Handler Bias. Unsurprisingly, Cops Don't Like it.
Post Date: 2017-12-01 18:12:12 by Deckard
0 Comments
from the accurate-data-is-fake-news dept When a cop needs an excuse to search something (but can't manage to talk the citizen into consenting) there's almost always a four-legged cop waiting in the wings to give the cop permission to do what he wanted to do anyway. You will rarely hear testimony given in any court case where a K9 hasn't "alerted" to the smell of drugs. Once this "alert" is delivered, officers are free to override objections to warrantless searches under the theory that a dog's permission is all that's needed. What's willfully ignored by law enforcement officers is the nature of the beasts they deploy: dogs like pleasing ...
Police are using DNA mugshots to arrest innocent people
Post Date: 2017-11-22 06:18:34 by Deckard
1 Comments
A recent Washington Times article, boasts that Texas law enforcement used predictive DNA imaging or ‘Phenotyping’ to guess what a suspect’s physical characteristics might be. This is not a joke, this is actually happening in police departments across the country. Parabon Nanolabs, claims their new analysis service can accurately predict what a suspect or victim looks like based on a sample of their DNA. “Snapshot is a revolutionary new forensic DNA analysis service that accurately predicts the physical appearance and ancestry of an unknown person from DNA. “ Parabon, boasts that Snapshot will produce a ‘detailed ...
A Sheriff Just Threatened Charges Over ‘F*ck Trump’ Sticker — and the Internet Is Destroying Him [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2017-11-17 06:40:28 by Deckard
107 Comments
On Wednesday morning, Sheriff Troy E. Nehls of Fort Bend County, Texas, posted a picture of the back of a truck asking members of the community to help him find the ‘offender.’ “I have received numerous calls regarding the offensive display on this truck as it is often seen along FM 359. If you know who owns this truck or it is yours, I would like to discuss it with you,” he said. Nehls apparently already sought to impose punishment, adding, “Our Prosecutor has informed us she would accept Disorderly Conduct charges regarding it, but I feel we could come to an agreement regarding a modification to it.” He also posted a picture in the comments of legal code ...
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