What rights have we lost over the last several years? HELP!

I was talking to a friend last night and we were discussing whether or not the second ammendment would be harmed if say...certain types of guns were banned. I say that it would start us down the slippery slope of losing our right to bear arms. She says, "The whole 'don't give the government an inch or they'll take a mile' doesn't seem to ever happen."

Actually her main argument was that the Constitution was a flexible document and that the founding fathers knew that things would change and wanted the Constitution to be able to change along with the times.

When I began to list things rights that we have lost in the last several years, she wanted specifics. Some of the things I brought up to her were:

1. We have lost the right to rent our homes to whomever we want.
2. When schools started accepting federal money, the local schools lost their right to make decisions for what is best for their own community.
3. Smokers lost their right to smoke in their offices, restaurants, bars, and in some cases (parental custody cases) their own homes.
4. Employers in some cases have lost the right to hire and fire based on merit.
5. California is forbidding parents to homeschool.

The FBI can secretly enter someone's home or office, search the premises, and leave without notifying the owner. In theory, this would be supervised by a court. However, the notification of the secret search "may be delayed" indefinitely (Section 213). This is, of course, a complete violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits "fishing expeditions" and guarantees the right of the people to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." All the federal government must do to suspend your Fourth Amendment rights is accuse you of terrorism.

You are mistaken. The cops can delay telling the subject of the warrant that he has been searched, if they get the judge to agree. That is, if "the court finds reasonable cause to believe that providing immediate notification of the execution of the warrant may have an adverse result" The cops still have to tell a judge and get his approval; this is the essence of following the 4th Amendment.

A society is to be run no differently. A would-be thief knows that what he is doing is against the rules and that there is a punishment for it. The entire idea of rule of law is that people can make choices based up a predetermined set of rules, that all agree to abide by. When judges and juries make up laws on the spot and punish people and companies for not obeying this new "law" that they had had no knowledge of existing is to introduce chaos and uncertainty where order should be.

Exactly!

And I interject that the "predetermined set of rules" can never change - for the simple fact you point out that they have to be "agreed up by ALL".

SEC. 213. AUTHORITY FOR DELAYING NOTICE OF THE EXECUTION OF A WARRANT.

Section 3103a of title 18, United States Code, is amended--

(1) by inserting `(a) IN GENERAL- ' before `In addition'; and

(2) by adding at the end the following:

`DELAY- With respect to the issuance of any warrant or court order under this section, or any other rule of law, to search for and seize any property or material that constitutes evidence of a criminal offense in violation of the laws of the United States, any notice required, or that may be required, to be given may be delayed if--

`(1) the court finds reasonable cause to believe that providing immediate notification of the execution of the warrant may have an adverse result (as defined in section 2705);

`(2) the warrant prohibits the seizure of any tangible property, any wire or electronic communication (as defined in section 2510), or, except as expressly provided in chapter 121, any stored wire or electronic information, except where the court finds reasonable necessity for the seizure; and

`(3) the warrant provides for the giving of such notice within a reasonable period of its execution, which period may thereafter be extended by the court for good cause shown.'

My particular beef is that I want to travel to any public place, by whatever conveyance, I want.

The Constitution guarantees a freedom to assemble. And to assemble at a fly-in, you have to fly. The heavy handed rules from the FAA are gradually killing personal aircraft, which should be a lesson for any industry regulated by government.

People who ride snowmobiles have lost the freedom to travel in public National Parks.

Bill Clinton created policies to close forrest roads, so those of us who bought SUVs to travel to these public places are screwed.

They have stopped the motorcycle race across the desert to Las Vegas because of some turtle.

People who ride personal water craft are being denied the freedom to travel on their personal choice of boat.

The majority of the Grand Canyon has been blocked off to private aircraft for a decade now. Despite the fact that seeing the canyon from the air has the least impact on the canyon and its wildlife. No roads. No trails. No crap in the woods. And its only human tree huggers who don't like the airplane noise. The environment likes airplanes.

You can't drive your SUV on the road into Denali National Park. You have to pay a concessionare to drive you in a communal bus. They are threatening to do the same thing in Grand Canyon, so you will no longer be able to stop where you want, and spend as long as you want, along the road beside the canyon.

How about the ban on assault weapons. Your second ammendment has already been attacked. Follow the methodologies used by the Marxists in the UK and Australia to understand how "boiling the frog" works. Currently, they are going after PELLET guns in the UK (that's all they have left). Needless to say, the UK and Australia rank 1st and 2nd among the industrialized nations for assault, robbery, rape, etc. But, you couldn't convince these Marxists that the "armed" people were "better" off. It just can't be.

DON'T GIVE UP YOUR GUNS, REGARDLESS OF WHAT ANYONE SAYS OR DOES. IT IS YOUR LAST PROTECTION AGAINST TYRANNY.

If you look at Art. II of the Articles of Confederation, you see the following: Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

Now look at Amendment X to the COTUS:The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The word "expressly" (or as you put it, specifically) does not appear in the tenth. If "expressly" had been placed in the Constitution, the Necessary and Proper of Art. I, Sec. 8 would have been repealed, making the Constitution no better than the Articles (or so Federalists argued). Madison, who drafted the first 12 proposed Amendments (10 of which are the Bill of rights, 1 was never ratified, and the last is the 27th Amendment) was heavily critized for this, since the opposition to the Constitution and the supporters of a bill of rights knew that the Amendment was mostly fluff and did little to restrict the power of Congress. That didn't stop ratification, since they felt a little was better than nothing.

The great irony is that the new government under the Federalists was not what Madison envisioned, with the Washington/Adams/Hamilton government having far more power than he envisioned, exploiting the Necessary and Proper clause for anything they wanted. It wasn't until the Republicans (Jeffersonians) spilt off and gained power that Madison's vision was realized.

With respect to the Second Amendmant are, (off the top of my head);
1. We have lost the right to own silencers, fully automatic weapons, modern shoulder fired weapons of a caliber greater than .50, short barrelled shotguns, (less than 18").
2. We have lost the right to own destructive devices, mortars, field artillery pieces, hand grenades, and so on.
3. We have lost the right to mail order firearms.
4. We have lost the right to own certain types of military style weapons because they look evil.
5. We have lost the right to have certain types of bullets, (steel core ammo).
6. We have lost the right to buy current production firearms with magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
7. We have lost the right to not be investigated by the government when we purchase the firearm.

The above is just a few, I'm sure others can give a more expansive list.

Semper Fi

I agree with you that it's important that "probable cause" be demonstrated to a judge before obtaining a warrant -- this is the very essence of the 4th Amendment.

But your fear that the provision allowing authorities not to inform the subject of a warrant will lead to "midnight knock" shootings makes little sense to me. Under previous law there was no requirement to tell a warrant subject ahead of time of the search, for obvious reasons. The absence of an after-the-fact notification can't lead to increased conflict during a search. Further, wiretaps have always, of course, been done secretly.

All that said, USA PATRIOT's Section 216 language, that the attorney for the Government merely has to have "certified to the court that the information likely to be obtained by such installation and use is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation" seems dangerous as it does not seem to require "probable cause," or convincing the judge of any actual merit to the attorney's claim.

I'd be interested if you know of any detailed analysis of this apparently dangerous language.

Under the new Patriot Act, the FBI's powers have been greatly expanded. First, warrants can be obtained under FISA if intelligence gathering is only a "significant purpose," rather than the "primary purpose." Because of this change, as long as intelligence gathering is a "significant purpose" of the warrant, evidence gathered by what could otherwise be unconstitutional methods might be used for a criminal investigation. Second, the Patriot Act specifically lowers the threshold for obtaining a full collection warrant for Internet traffic. Instead of needing probable cause as required by Title III, the FBI now only needs to show that the information to be gathered is "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." That is a much lower standard than showing probable cause that a crime has been committed. The third major change is that when a wiretap warrant is issued, the person whose communications are being captured is notified, though sometimes this notification is allowed to be after the fact. The Patriot Act now allows nearly any search to be made in secret. Finally, these changes made by the Patriot Act are not limited to surveillance of suspected terrorists, but apply to all surveillance cases.

So, the bottom line is that the FBI can now get a warrant to capture all your Internet communications by showing that your communications might be relevant to their investigation of a case. It does not have to be a case that directly involves you, nor do they need to show probable cause that you have committed any crime. The data would be collected using the Carnivore tool, a tool that has no accountability. Should you be concerned about possible misuse of this technology? That's up to you to decide.

Executive Security Briefing

Here is one.

I would come at this from a different perspective. First of all, we Americans now live in municipalities, counties and states that have created a blizzard of codes, rules and regulations to regulate everything from yard appearance to how we treat our children in public. Problem is these codes, etc. are not "positive" law and are passed under the "color of law" or an abrogation of the law. Most likely, 99.9% of these codes et al are NOT constitutional in nature and are unenforceable. (We are just ignorant of our circumstances and just go along with this nonsense.)

Dealing with any gov't. entity whether it's the schools, city police depts. or code enforcers is now all about attempting to comprehend their "policies", "procedures", etc. all of which attempt to restrict freedoms that previous generations always took for granted. When we have faceless, odorless and colorless gov't. entities full of robotic, non-thinking bureaucrats whose only purpose is to fully implement "policy" then we will see the gradual deterioration of our God-given constitutional rights which are INALIENABLE to be replaced by gov't. granted CIVIL rights which can changed, replaced or terminated at will by
gov't. types. Sounds more and more like we are becoming the new version of the Soviet Union.

What are you talking about? The Necessary and Proper clause only permits the making of legislation which is necessary and proper to carry into execution the foregoing powers. Those foregoing powers being the enumerated ones.

In other words, they are given the power to write laws to make their other powers a reality. They are not given a carte blance by this clause to invoke new powers not granted.

One of the worst losses we have suffered is when the government is now allowed to seize property for "suspected" drug dealing. The "suspected" person need never even be charged, much less convicted of any crime. This completely violates the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no person be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,"

Not only that, the Constitution specifically prohibits the federal government from doing what it is not specifically directed to do. Recently it has simply assumed the opposite: that what the Constitution does not prohibit, the feds are allowed to do.

Section 216 of the PATRIOT ACT allows the government to tap your phone and computer without probable cause. Under this section, a judge MUST rubber stamp a warrant as long as law enforcement certifies that the surveillance is "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." No probable cause of criminal activity is required to issue the warrant. This violates the probable cause provision of the 4th Amendment.

Further, Section 218 allows the government to carry out secret searches and wiretaps without showing probable cause merely by certifying that there is a "significant" foreign intelligence purpose. This also evades the 4th Amendment.

Section 802 creates the crime of "domestic terrorism." This criminalizes acts that "appear to be intended" to "influence the policy of the government by intimidation or coercion" or to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population."

This section would make just about any act of civil disobedience in protest against government policies into an act of domestic terrorism.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.