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Posted on 04/03/2012 8:35:32 PM PDT by Nachum
NewsWeek/DailyBeast – The Roberts Court’s rulings appear to be a concerted effort to send us back to the Gilded Age. If they dump the Affordable Care Act, writes David Dow, we should dump them.
You think the idea is laughable? Thomas Jefferson disagreed with you.
Jefferson believed Supreme Court justices who undermine the principles of the Constitution ought to be impeached, and that wasn’t just idle talk. During his presidency, Jefferson led the effort to oust Justice Salmon Chase, arguing that Chase was improperly seizing power. The Senate acquitted Chase in 1805, and no Justice has been impeached since, but as the Supreme Court threatens to nullify the health-care law, Jefferson’s idea is worth revisiting.
The problem with the current court is not merely that there is a good chance it will strike down a clearly constitutional law. The problem is that this decision would be the latest salvo in what seems to be a sustained effort on the part of the Roberts Court to return the country to the Gilded Age. [...]
(Excerpt) Read more at patdollard.com ...
Sure the House could impeach - and the Senate even convict and punish - but not under the auspices of our Constitution.
They would be forging new ground - ground far from our Constitution- in arguing that five of nine (or more) SCOTUS Judges agreeing on a ruling of law is a “high crime” or “misdemeanor” or that disagreeing with the President is not exhibiting “good behavior” consistent with being a Judge.
I was just listening to John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute on local radio. The idea that we have any ‘conservative’ judges is a sick joke. Those ‘conservative’ judges just ruled that anyone, without probable cause, without warrant can be body searched, can have their homes entered.
They are ELITISTS. They know they live like kings and are protected as such and will never have to be subjected to the laws they lay down for the rest of us.
We have NO ONE on our side, sickoflibs.
John Whitehead’s
Weekly Commentary:
Strip-Searching America: Florence v. County of Burlington
Strip-Searching America: Florence v. County of Burlington [SHORT]
Everybody’s a Target in the American Surveillance State
Strip-Searching America: Florence v. County of Burlington [SHORT]
April 03, 2012
By John W. Whitehead
In a devastating 5-4 ruling that not only condones an overreach of state power but legitimizes what is essentially state-sponsored humiliation and visual rape, the U.S. Supreme Court recently declared that any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials without reasonable suspicion that the arrestee is carrying a weapon or contraband. The five-man majority rationalized their ruling as being necessary for safety, security and efficiency, the government’s overused and all-too-convenient justifications for its steady erosion of our freedoms since 9/11.
This ruling stems from the case of Albert Florence who was erroneously arrested for failing to pay a traffic fine and forced to submit to two egregious strip and visual body-cavity searches at two different county jails. Florence, an African-American man in his mid-thirties, was on his way to Sunday dinner in 2005 with his then-pregnant wife and 4-year-old son when they were stopped by a New Jersey State Police trooper. Florence’s wife was driving. However, after showing his ID, Florence found himself handcuffed, arrested and taken to jail. After spending six days in jail, Florence was finally able to prove his innocence.
Outraged, Florence sued the jail officials who had needlessly degraded his bodily integrity. A federal appeals court sanctioned the blanket strip search policy, which was then affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In a nutshell, what Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, concluded was that it is impractical—“unworkable” was the phrase used—to expect overworked jail officials to have to take the time to distinguish between harmless individuals guilty of nothing more than driving without a seatbelt and those who pose a true threat and may be reasonably suspected of carrying drugs or weapons.
Of course, the Constitution insists that a workable solution must be found—one that squares with the Bill of Rights. But in an age when the courts show greater deference to bureaucracy than democracy, making life easier for harried jailers trumps the Constitution. Consequently, any person who is arrested, no matter how minor the alleged criminal act, can now be subjected to a degrading strip search. Examples of minor violations which could now lead to a strip search are many and include “violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support.”
These blanket strip searches are not for the faint of heart. A typical strip search, as described in a prison manual and cited by Justice Stephen Breyer in his dissent, involves:
a visual inspection of the inmate’s naked body. This should include the inmate opening his mouth and moving his tongue up and down and from side to side, removing any dentures, running his hands through his hair, allowing his ears to be visually examined, lifting his arms to expose his arm pits, lifting his feet to examine the sole, spreading and/or lifting his testicles to expose the area behind them and bending over and/or spreading the cheeks of his buttocks to expose his anus. For females, the procedures are similar except females must in addition, squat to expose the vagina.
One can certainly understand the need for such precautions when dealing with dangerous criminals. But is there really any reason to subject a mother arrested for driving with her children unbelted to such an invasive strip search? What about the nun arrested for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration? Or the activists arrested in a free speech protest or those who engage in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience? In keeping with this ruling, any and all of these individuals could now find themselves subjected to exposing their naked bodies in a variety of poses designed to “show all” to the prying eyes of government officials.
Frankly, I doubt that Anthony M. Kennedy, John G. Roberts Jr., Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.—the five justices who seemed to have no trouble inflicting such humiliations on the populace—would be inclined to condone such dehumanizing treatment were there even the slightest possibility that they might be subjected to it.
This ruling reinforces the idea that we are all to be treated as suspects. A forcible strip search upon arrest inverts the presumption of innocence into the presumption of guilt. Before even being allowed to call a lawyer, the arrestee is faced with the dehumanizing treatment of a strip search, a security measure traditionally reserved for those suspected of a serious crime or already proven guilty.
Despite having essentially gifted jailers with carte blanche authority to strip search individuals at will, the Court may find it has opened a proverbial can of worms. Although most Americans are very compliant, many will not readily submit to these strip searches—especially not if they are innocent of any serious criminal wrongdoing.
In light of the fact that approximately 13 million people are introduced to American jails in any given year, we may soon see millions of people needlessly strip-searched over minor offenses such as unpaid traffic fines. What remains to be seen is whether this license to strip-search will become the next weapon of compliance to be used against those who question the power of the state. For the moment, however, thanks to the Supreme Court, visually invasive strip searches will at least be the hallmark of jailhouses across the United States.
“The problem with the current court is not merely that there is a good chance it will strike down a clearly constitutional law.”
I’d think that if the court strikes down the law then it was not “clearly consititutional” and instead is clearly unconstitutional.
I have mixed feelings about this. I dont think that is the way I would approach this.
This is in the case of an arrest. Now maybe we need more protections against un-wrongful arrests since many employers will not hire anyone who was arrested even if the charges are dropped.
Good post.....dose of their own medicine.
Kagan leaked it....she is a radical freak like Obama
Remember what the left tried to do to Justice Thomas?
That to me, was the turning point in this country...the
hard left took over the Dem party, and never looked back.
You forgot Bork.
They got Gregory Peck to act in commercials warning voters that Bork would over-rule the 14th Amendment and reimpose slavery. What they did to Thomas was childs play in comparison. Thomas got the appointment, Bork was rejected.
Bork had made the mistake of articulating his judicial philosophy before he was appointed.
Both sides.
But I think Republicans should raise a stink about Dems contempt for the legal system. Dems did it to them.
Exactly right. Anthony Kennedy had a less "controversial" written record. After that the Bork hearings cast a long shadow on all future SCOTUS vacancies, and "Bork" became a verb.
I had a "moderate" friend (pro-choice etc.) but he respected Bork, bought his book The Tempting of America, and kept reading passages to me.
I think Bork would have been a better justice than Kennedy, but leftists do count the votes, and if Bork had been confirmed, I think 3 years later Thomas would have faced even fiercer attacks from the left. Bork was nominated to replace the "moderate" Powell, while Thomas was to replace the ideologically opposite Thurgood Marshall (why did he retire when GHWB was POTUS?). Marshall, whose clerks included Kagan and Cass Sunstein, made a remarkably Obama-like statement at the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution in 1987:
...the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today
I forgot Bork.....he was a brilliant man to boot
Republicans in D.C. all retired Jan. 20, 2009
I suppose I didn't make my point clearly. I was not assertng that it would be Constitutional, only that they would try it and get away with it.
The last few years many questionable maneuvers by the 'Rat legislature essential shut off the opposing party and skirted legality, and they got away with it (gutting a senate passed bill and inserting an unreconciled new bill in its entirety comes to mind,) because those with standing failed to challenge and push back. Once that precedent is set, undoing the damage is nigh impossible.
The Supreme Court cannot slap down unconstitutional acts of their own initiative. Someone with standing must formally submit a challenge for review.
It's not the conservative justices who would be in danger from Jefferson, but the LIBERAL ones.
Thanks sickoflibs.
The phone records (incoming and outgoing calls) for the White House should be public all the time, in real time.
And archived for later perusal by any and all. Now that’s transparent! Do it, zer0! We can’t wait for congress to act on this!
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