This must never be allowed to happen again. PERIOD.
Posted on 04/07/2008 9:49:09 AM PDT by BGHater
Then we agree. When Ron Paul is a dishonest demagogue playing on the ignorance of the electorate when he states as a fact that “The Fourth Amendment to our Constitution requires the government to have a warrant when it wishes to look into the private affairs of individuals.” He knows that is not correct, but he plays to the indignation of his ignorant supporters.
The fact is that there is no general warrant requirement in the Fourth Amendment. Yet you continue to talk about “exceptions to the warrant requirement.”
The requirement is that searches and seizures be reasonable . . . and that warrants require probable cause.
If the only basis for a search or seizure is a warrant that isn’t based on probable cause, the search or seizure isn’t reasonable. But if it is reasonable to do the search or seizure without a warrant, it is legal even without a warrant.
Because I believe that the kind of foreign intelligence surveillance currently being conducted by the government is reasonable, I don’t believe that the kind of foreign intelligence surveillance currently being conducted by the government should require a warrant.
I also believe Ron Paul is a demagogue who uses tactics more commonly used by leftist Democrats.
Well, in fact, the Constitution does require it, the Supreme Court's self-serving carve-outs notwithstanding.
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent . . . The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." - Justice Brandeis (1928)
The Supreme Court is not the Constitution. That should be manifestly evident given how they rubber-stamped the "Africans are sub-human," FDR's "general welfare" poppycock, and "the unborn are sub-human" theories.
Well, in fact, the Constitution does not require it.
The Fourth Amendment says:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
There is a comma between the word “violated” and the words “and no Warrant shall issue . . . .”
The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures.
Further it states that Warrants require probable cause.
The Supreme Court has said that some searches and seizures may violate the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement even if a warrant is supported by probable cause and is limited in scope.
Conversely, the Court has approved routine warrantless seizures, for example “where there is probable cause to believe that a criminal offense has been or is being committed.”
The government needs probable cause for a search or seizure to be reasonable, not a necessarily a warrant.
In addition, the amendment applies only to the government. It does not guarantee to people the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures conducted by private citizens or organizations.
Under my skin? Not really. The first sentance says it all....”there was nothing to protect the national life”
What is a Nation if free people do not have the rights vested to them in the Constitution to seceed from a corrupt mother Government? It’s why we fought the Revolutionary War. It’s why we made rules allowing us to cast off the chains of tyranny when a State found it appropriate.
Lincoln re-wrote the rules to fit his grand vision. Look at what it wrought.
And for the record, I’m a Yankee. I just happen to be a Yankee that completely disagrees with Lincolnites. If our fore-fathers had been alive to see what he accomplished, they’d have spit in his face.
"The Fourth Amendment proscribes all unreasonable searches and seizures, and it is a cardinal principle that "searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by a judge or magistrate [a "warrant"], are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment ..." - Katz v. United States, 389 US 347, 357
Indeed, the Fourth Amendment was patterned after the Constitutions of the 13 States. Pennsylvania's reads:
The people have a right to hold themselves, their houses, papers and possessions free from search and seizure, and therefore warrants without oaths or affirmations first made, affording sufficient foundation for them, and whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded or required to search suspected places, or to seize any person or persons, his or their property, not particularly described, are contrary to that right and ought not be granted.
General warrants are contrary to the inherent right to be free of search and seizure by government, it says - how much more so having no warrant at all?
In Virginia:
SEC. 10. That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offence is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive, and ought not to be granted.
If a general warrant is grievous and oppressive, how much more so no warrant at all?
FISA defines two broad classes of intelligence: "wire" and "signal". These groupings are not further classified into domestic and international categories because in 1978, all wire intelligence was either one or the other, but never both, while signal intelligence was presumed to be radio and satellite-based, and therefore subject to intercept.
FISA was amended to address the changes brought about by the advent of internet and cellular communication networks, and the threats to our national security that have arisen as a result. An Iranian terrorist in Afghanistan calling a fellow Saudi operative in Mexico may have his call routed through San Jose, California. Does this make it a "domestic" phone call, within the original meaning of FISA? The answer is "yes" it does, and exempts it from surveillance, even though neither party is a US citizen and neither is physically in the US. This was not the intention of the original legislation, nor does it comport with the 4th Amendment, which does not extend to foreigners on foreign soil.
The amended FISA statute, which was allowed to expire by the Democrat House, allowed our intelligence agencies to intercept and record such communications, and provided a grant to telecommunications companies that reasonably relied on written government assurances that what they were being asked to do was legal.
Democrats object specifically to this latter provision because their multi-billion dollar funders in the Trial Lawyer industry would be foreclosed from a round of potentially lucrative class action lawsuits. Ron Paul objects, apparently because he believes that companies shouldn't require immunity if they are not breaking the law. Normally, that would be a fair argument - but this is not a "fair" situation. A law (FISA) was amended to remedy a legal fiction. The telecom companies acted with reasonable reliance upon written guarantees from the Federal government that they were acting within the bounds of the law. Now, the law has expired, and the same industry is afraid that they will be retroactively held to have violated the original statute, or that they will again in the future if a future version is also allowed to lapse. Given the voracious and hyper-partisan nature of our trial lawyers, is this not a reasonable fear?
Either way, I do not believe it is a legitimate 4th Amendment issue where foreign operatives are concerned, or where a foreign operative is in communication with an American citizen outside of the United States. Even as presumptively amended, FISA provides very real protection for citizens engaged in domestic conversations, the vast and overwhelming majority of which are none of the government's business.
Vance Packard ‘The Naked Society’ 1962
Not much new here.
Vance Packard was a liberal pop sociologist who made a career on exploiting public paranoia. He believed that people’s minds could be so easily manipulated by advertisers that they no longer possessed free will and that Capitalism was morally bankrupt. I read lots of him in college. Thanks, but I’ll pass.
Unlike this thread.
Ron Paul said: “The Fourth Amendment to our Constitution requires the government to have a warrant when it wishes to look into the private affairs of individuals.”
Ron Paul’s statement, which began this comment interchange, is false.
. . . “searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment” but . . .
That means the government has the burden of proving that the search or seizure was reasonable even though it was conducted without a warrant.
The government does not need “a warrant when it wishes to look into the private affairs of individuals” when the criminal activity is in plain view, in open fields, in exigent circumstances, involves stopped motor vehicles, is incident to a lawful arrest, in border searches, and some other situations.
And, the Fourth Amendment applies only to the government. It does not guarantee to people the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures conducted by private citizens or organizations.
RE: Sept 11 Attack
Let me see if I understand this. The Government failed to accept the that we could be attacked and we were- so now it is best that our banks, phone companies and soon our neighbors should be spying on us. Where do you think we are living, Cuba!
As Franklin said, “Those that give up their liberties for security soon lose both”.
I think it is best you should sign away your liberties so you can pretend that you are safe while I will retain mine and remain free.
The reason the south "seceeded" in the manner they did, is because they could not abide by the rules of the Constitution itself. The only "Corruption", as you put it, that was occuring in the government was a direct result of the efforts of pro-slavery politicians trying to subvert the Constitution towards their own ends.
When it became apparant that they would no longer be able to continue the process, they bolted. Had they put the issue of seccession to a vote of the full senate and congress, as the Cosntitution required, they would not have succeeded. They took a unilateral action that affected the whole country, without giving the entire country a chance to weigh in on the matter.
They were not getting their way using the democratic procees, so they threw a temper tantrum, took their marbles and went home. And they fired the first shot.
And yet somehow it was all Lincolns fault. I have to say I have rarely run into anyone, even southerners, whose knowledge of the political run-up to that war is as distorted as yours.
Furthermore, the world would have been a far more tryannical place had the the union not been preserved. World Wars I & II speak to that. Take the blinders off.
“The reason the south “seceeded” in the manner they did, is because they could not abide by the rules of the Constitution itself.”
Yes, much like George Washington’s revolutionaries could no longer tolerate King George’s charter. Was that a “legal war”? It’s funny how patriots pick and choose convenient patriotic acts, and brand them with the label “PATRIOTIC”.
Regarding your notion that WW 1 and WW 2 would not have been fought, thus engulfing the war in despotism, I disagree. No evidence suggests that the South would not be as incentivized as a seperate North to come to the aid of our British friends. Indeed, was it not the British who assisted the South in the Civil War? Your presumption is ambitious, at best.
Besides, we have ourselves to thank for the results of WW 2 (perhaps better than the alternative) Ah, The Good War, WW2. The one that left us with the murderous Stalin, annhilating tens of millions of his own (and other) people and Mao Zedong murdering millions more.
I have clipped a section from a recent column by one of America’s greatest writers and minds below.....Buchanan. My apologies to Patrick the Great.
Britain declared war on Sept. 3, 1939, to preserve Poland. For six years, Poland was occupied by Nazi and Soviet armies and SS and NKVD killers. At war’s end, the Polish dead were estimated at 6 million. A third of Poland had been torn away by Stalin, and Nazis had used the country for the infamous camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz.
Fifteen thousand Polish officers had been massacred at places like Katyn. The Home Army that rose in Warsaw at the urging of the Red Army in 1944 had been annihilated, as the Red Army watched from the other side of the Vistula. When the British celebrated V-E day in May 1945, Poland began 44 years of tyranny under the satraps of Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Was World War II “a good war” for the Poles?
Was it a good war for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, overrun by Stalin’s army in June 1940, whose people saw their leaders murdered or deported to the Gulag never to return? Was it a good war for the Finns who lost Karelia and thousands of brave men dead in the Winter War?
Was it a good war for Hungarians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Rumanians and Albanians who ended up behind the Iron Curtain? In Hungary, it was hard to find a woman or girl over 10 who had not been raped by the “liberators” of the Red Army. Was it a good war for the 13 million German civilians ethnically cleansed from Central Europe and the 2 million who died in the exodus?
Was it a good war for the French, who surrendered after six weeks of fighting in 1940 and had to be liberated by the Americans and British after four years of Vichy collaboration?
And how good a war was it for the British?
They went to war for Poland, but Winston Churchill abandoned Poland to Stalin. Defeated in Norway, France, Greece, Crete and the western desert, they endured until America came in and joined in the liberation of Western Europe.
Yet, at war’s end in 1945, Britain was bled and bankrupt, and the great cause of Churchill’s life, preserving his beloved empire, was lost. Because of the “Good War” Britain would never be great again.
And were the means used by the Allies, the terror bombing of Japanese and German cities, killing hundreds of thousands of women and children, perhaps millions, the marks of a “good war”?
Cohen contends that the evil of the Holocaust makes it a “good war.” But the destruction of the Jews of Europe was a consequence of this war, not a cause. As for the Japanese atrocities like the Rape of Nanking, they were indeed horrific.
But America’s smashing of Japan led not to freedom for China, but four years of civil war followed by 30 years of Maoist madness in which 30 million Chinese perished.
For America, the war was Pearl Harbor and Midway, Anzio and Iwo Jima, Normandy and Bastogne, days of glory leading to triumph and the American Century.
But for Joseph Stalin, it was also a good war. From his pact with Adolf Hitler he annexed parts of Finland and Rumania, and three Baltic republics. His armies stood in Berlin, Prague and Vienna; his agents were vying for power in Rome and Paris; his ally was installed in North Korea; his protege, Mao, was about to bring China into his empire. But it was not so good a war for the inmates of Kolyma or the Russian POWs returned to Stalin in Truman’s Operation Keelhaul.
Is a war that replaces Hitler’s domination of Europe with Stalin’s and Japan’s rule in China with Mao’s a “good war”? We had to stop the killers, says Cohen. But who were the greater killers: Hitler or Stalin, Tojo or Mao Zedong?
Can a war in which 50 million perished and the Christian continent was destroyed, half of it enslaved, a war that has advanced the death of Western civilization, be truly celebrated as a “good war”?
For the entire piece, please shoot over to:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25859
Now, it is YOU that needs the blinders removed because, as Erasmus once observed, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed pig is King.
Yes, much like George Washington’s revolutionaries could no longer tolerate King George’s charter. Was that a “legal war”? It’s funny how patriots pick and choose convenient patriotic acts, and brand them with the label “PATRIOTIC”.
So, by your logic (what little there is), The U.S. Constitution was no better than the rule of King George, and therefore the slave state had the right to completely disregard it.
The Constitution, among other things, was a contract between not only the individual citizens and the federal government, it was also an agreement between the various states to each other and the federal government. When they ratified the constitution, they, in effect, signed a contract.
Now, as I am sure you know, a contract cannot be legally abrogated by one party unless it has been violated by the other party. Treaties, contracts, constitutions have always recognized this simple fact of civil behavior.
When the confederate state unilaterally broke that contract without full agreement, they were wrong. And they did it for the purile reason that they were not getting what they wanted, not what they were "garanteed" under the contract that the Constitution in fact was.
The Confederates also began planning for this breach of contract for a full decade beforehand by diverting federal funds for the building of defensive works in the southern states that were said to be needed for the national defense, but were actually intended for the defense of the confederacy when war came--that was what Jeff Davis spent most of his time doing as secretary of war. When the war came the South had full, well stocked armories and new forts along her coasts and waterway that had been built with funds provided by all the states. Meanwhile, armories in the north were left half empty, forts in need of repair and few new ones built.
Would this be the corruption of liberties you were talking about?
Or would it be the bastardization of the Constitution by slave state politicians and members of the supreme court that resulted in the 3/5'ths compromise? Now there's the tyranny for you. Allowing slave to be counted for census purposes so you can pack the legislature with more votes than you deserve in order to preserve slavery.
Tell me, please, what great injustice was perpetrated against the southern states that warranted their leaving the union? Didn't they read the Constitution before they signed it. Please, do your best to educate me, and try to do it in your own words, not with screed from the Pat & Paul show.
And one other thing. Lets say, for the sake of argument, that all you have said is true. Why serve in the armed forces of this tyrannical nation which perpetrated all the horrors of history the Buchannan outlines. How do you square that?
One other thing with reference to Buchannans article.
It is based on a false logic that you cannot take an action (right, wrong or indifferent), because it may result in an un-knowable negetive result in the future.
Simply extend Pat’s logic backwards. By his reasoning (which you subscribe to), the American Revolution should not have been fought. Because that led to the formation of the country under the U.S. Constituion, which led, eventually to the Civil War.
Therefore, we should have remained loyal subjects of the crown, taken whatever King George tried to ram down our throats, and the future would have been all bright and rosy.
Its like saying that you will do nothing to stop a crime in progress because you actions may have some unintended negetive impact on someone or something in the future.
And that, sir, is the only refutation need of Pats seemingly connected string of “facts”.
And again, I’d ask you to square that with your military service. You are working for an organization that routinely impacts the future history of the world in the effort to do good and protect freedom. You yourself may be an agent of an unintended evil in your attemtp to do what you see as the right thing to do.
BTW, before you go quoting Erasmus, you might want to think about the proper use of that quote and to whome it actually applies.
“Men decide many more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion, or some similar emotion, than by reason or authority or any legal standards, or legal precedents, or law.” - Cicero, De Oratore, c.50 B.C.
Ignorance is bliss. Your Union was populated by slave loving peoples and, in fact, had more than a few States that kept the practice legalized.
Pat Buchanan is a genius. Unfortunately the Neocons have tried to marginalize his great intellect. I notice that you didn’t dispute any of his points. He’s a hard guy to call misinformed.
Is it your position that the Civil War was fought over the slavery issue? Again this argument? Are you mad?
What do you think Lincoln’s position was on blacks? Wait, don’t tell me, he loved them and fought the Civil War to free slaves. Ridiculous.
Your mention of the contractual nature of the Constitution, making it binding, completely disregards the fact that it is continuously deficated upon for purposes of political expediency. The Constitution is a document that has been manipulated by dozens of George Bushs. Further, a contract can be broken provided adequate stipulations are contained within it to allow it to be voided. The Declaration of Independence was, in fact, a Declaration of Secession.
I was commissioned under Reagan, as I made an obligation while in school. I served for 10 yrs in the regular Navy and serve today in another capacity.
George Bush Jr and Sr are not fit to wipe Ronald Reagan’s *ss. Further, it is my opinion that the two of them have undone all that Reagan gifted us. Having said that, Reagan wouldn’t be fit to shine the shoes of, say, Alex Hamilton.
As Mark Twain said, “Get your facts first, and you can distort them as much as you please”
You can demand all you like, but the fact is that until the SCOTUS White decision of 1869 (nearly all constructionist writing on the topic vehemently disagrees with the decision) the States clearly understood the right to secede was implicit. More than a few historical instances exist where States considered seceeding or draft articles in that direction. If illegal, why consider it? And I’m talking about Northern States.
You know, just stating something as fact does not make it so. Believe what you want, bootlicker, dont let the inconvenience of fact get in the way.
this little tiff started with your love of George Bushs warrantless surveillence. My position is not to speak for me, but feel free to speak for yourself. Your ignorance plays into the hands of John McCain and Barack Obama. Either of which would bastardize any good intent that the program might have to serve their sinister needs. You vote, I vote. Have at it.
Pat is a smart man, but hardly a genius. I did not go point by point because it was unecessary. His entire argument was a "straw-man", which i pointed out. And again, you have failed to actually try to refute my arguments. You keep bringing up Pat's screed, written for the sole purpose of getting noticed and brought on to the radio talk show circuit.
Is it your position that the Civil War was fought over the slavery issue? Again this argument? Are you mad?
Ah yes, the "it wasn't about slavery argument". Have you ever read a copy of the "Confederate Constitution"? I have. If it wasn't about slavery, then why did Confederate state lawmakers pack it full of clauses garanteeing the rights of slave-owners, while completely ignoring all the issues they claimed it was about. I've had this discussion before and have yet to have anyone answer that. Perhaps you'll be the first.
On the Southern side, since most southerners did not, infact own slaves, and would not fight simply to preserve that institution, they had to turn bring their constituents along by making the whole argument about "states rights", "free trade", "property rights", etc. Much the same way politicians do today with sticky issues, and as they have always done.
On the Union side, they had to do the same thing and even Lincoln found it necessary to engage public opinion by talk of preserving the union and avoiding the subject of freeing the slaves. People in the North were willing to fight to preserve the union, but not to end slavery even if they were opposed to it.
Bt, slavery was the issue, the Tar Baby around which everything else stuck. If there had been no slavery in the south, would there have been a Civil War? NO. It was the cause of the war. And no, Lincoln did not love negroes, or believe they were equal to whites, but he was an abolitionist. When he was elected, he begged, in his Cooper Union speech, for the Southern states to remain and work out the differences peacefully. But the Soouth had already decided otherwise.
Your mention of the contractual nature of the Constitution, making it binding, completely disregards the fact that it is continuously deficated upon for purposes of political expediency. The Constitution is a document that has been manipulated by dozens of George Bushs. Further, a contract can be broken provided adequate stipulations are contained within it to allow it to be voided. The Declaration of Independence was, in fact, a Declaration of Secession.
I agree. But that does not refute what I said. And, as you will recall, I was speaking in context of the Civil War. And you still have not answered my question: "what injustice was perpetrated against the south that warranted their unilateral separation from the union". After deciding among themselves they wanted to leave, the proper course would have been to bring the matter to a vote in the full Congress and Senate. I was commissioned under Reagan, as I made an obligation while in school. I served for 10 yrs in the regular Navy and serve today in another capacity. When I mentioned my military service and that of some of my other family members as proof of my patriotism, you were quite dismissive of that. Yet now, I'm supposed to bow down before yours and say "gee, Im sorry for contradicting you".
I joined the Army in 1980. I came up through the ranks and was commissioned in 1990. My Brother spent 8 years in the Marine Corps, My father was a Naval Aviator During Vietnam (A-4s), My daughter is 6 years in the Army and two tours in Iraq, my son-in-law is a Marine with 8 years service and 2 tours in Iraq. So there.
When I asked why you serve a country and government for which you seem to have so much animosity and disdain, I was not being flip or trying to dismiss your service the way you dismissed mine. I just can't see how you can have some of the opinions you have and then serve a country you have such disrespect for (or seem to).
You believe (based on what you have written) that the United States should have been dissolved in 1861 and that Lincoln's efforts to preserve the union have wrought nothing but disaster for the world. If I believed those things, I don't think I could ever have thought of serving. It's that simple.
George Bush Jr and Sr are not fit to wipe Ronald Reagan’s *ss. Further, it is my opinion that the two of them have undone all that Reagan gifted us. Having said that, Reagan wouldn’t be fit to shine the shoes of, say, Alex Hamilton.
No argument there.
As Mark Twain said, “Get your facts first, and you can distort them as much as you please”.
I'd say you have done a pretty good job of that.
You can demand all you like, but the fact is that until the SCOTUS White decision of 1869 (nearly all constructionist writing on the topic vehemently disagrees with the decision) the States clearly understood the right to secede was implicit.
Only those attempting to justify it after the fact.
More than a few historical instances exist where States considered seceeding or draft articles in that direction. If illegal, why consider it? And I’m talking about Northern States.
Just a guess, but I'm thinking that all kinds of rash actions are considered in the heat of the moment and then dissmissed as the folly they are when cooler heads prevail.
You know, just stating something as fact does not make it so. Believe what you want, bootlicker, dont let the inconvenience of fact get in the way.
And here we are. When all else fails, degenerate to name calling. Did I call you names? Is that how a commissioned officer in the Navy wins arguments?
As for the facts, I am in command of them. I've lost count of the number of civil war histories I've read. As a poly-sci major I even wrote a few papers on the subject of the politics surrounding the war (though I am sure that you'll find a way to dismiss that as well).
this little tiff started with your love of George Bushs warrantless surveillence.
Quote one thing I have written that could even remotely be considered an expression of love for Bush and warrantless surveillence. You can't even get that right. Also, the mere fact that you refer to the FISA bill as "warrantless surveillence" proves you don't know a damn thing about it. Its a distortion of what the FISA is. And, as a reminder, I referred to it as a neccessary evil that should only be tollerated as long as the safeguard of a sunset clause is part of it.
By the way, did you hear about the terrorists that Britain stopped from taking down 7 airliners? They took the cell down just before it went operational. They were able to find out about, get the goods on them and round them up just before they operational because they were able to do just what the FISA program would allow. I'm sure that makes no difference to you, but I can think of 1900 people it would have made a difference to.
My position is not to speak for me,...
Whatever that means.
but feel free to speak for yourself.
I never presumed to speak for anyone else. Did you?
Your ignorance plays into the hands of John McCain and Barack Obama. Either of which would bastardize any good intent that the program might have to serve their sinister needs.
You vote, I vote. Have at it.
I hope you do. I'm glad there are un repentent, paranoid cynics out there. The sad thing is that other than one or two very narrow issues, we probably would agree on most things. I think it is unfortunate that you allowed your emotions to take this discussion into the gutter of name-calling. Better to aggree to disagree than alienate people who are probably for the most part an ally.
Think about it.
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