Posted on 05/23/2003 2:52:51 PM PDT by EBUCK
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:13:57 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
I think it would be less disturbing if they got a crappy warrant on one place, and went in, but what judge in his right mind, gives the police the authority to do no knocks on 4 different residences, just because they are in the same building?
I can guarantee you this though. We do have unequal justice in this country. I am sure there is somebody in Trump Tower who is dealing coke. Wanna bet me that a judge doesn't give the police the authority to no knock the entire building on those grounds?
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers and health professionals on Friday to check for three counterfeit lots of the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor that are being recalled by a Kansas City-based distributor..."
This from another thread today on Free Republic. Still trust the market place?
And tobacco in New York.
You forgot Your < /sarcasm> tag
This from another thread today on Free Republic. Still trust the market place?
Let me understand what you are asking. Under the watchful eye of government workers, some drugs that were probably imported from India ( according to a post in the thread) - because they are cheaper, and this is a failure of the market place and not the government workers?
Is this what you are asking?
Consider the fire in the night club that claimed approximately 100 people. The local Fire department and government assumed responsibility for fire safety with their ordinances and inspections. After the fire they took no blame, they just called for more government responsibility. Feel any safer?
A mountain road without guardrails is safer than the same road with imaginary guardrails. Trusting the government to protect your every move is as stupid as depending on imaginary guard rails.
As stupid as trusting a Judge, who sends revenue agents out to terrorize whole apartment buildings, to respect the Constitution? I think so.
A failure of the market place? Au contraire! A stunning success of the market place.
Without government patent protection (allowed by Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution), this is exactly what would happen worldwide. In the short term, this is great for consumers (cheaper drugs). Of course, in the long run, the (evil) pharmaceuticals will go out of business. Hey, don't worry, you can go to India to get your drugs.
The point of the Lipitor article was that the market place is not to be trusted. I could have just as easily cited WorldCom, or Enron, or Martha Stewart's shady dealings. You need to get out of your John Galt world -- it was a good read, but it was fiction, Mrs Mark.
Privatizing the FDA sounds good on the surface, but I'm not convinced it would be any more efficient. Maybe less so, since they could be sued out of existence. Plus, they would have no power to enforce laws.
As far as guard rails and fires, hey I'm with you. Tear down the guard rails and let each nightclub set their own fire safety standards. Let the buyer beware! Feel safer?
The last years of his career were spent as the Chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he’d touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens, would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
My sister is married to a good guy – who was also a good cop.
And I STILL vividly recall a business trip and having a flat tire. I pulled onto the narrow shoulder and was opening the trunk when I spied a Georgia State Trooper’s car cross the median, hit the flashers and pull in some distance behind me and a bit closer to the road, shielding me and my car from the 70 MPH traffic. SHE got out and asked if I needed any help. I told her I could probably handle it. She said she’d keep her unit there until I got done.
THEN she spotted my cane and saw that I was partially disabled. Before I could object, she was in the trunk, had wrestled the spare to the ground and was jacking up the car, all the while asking me to remain safely near the guardrail. About that time, two county deputies stopped and pitched in. The lady trooper cut her hand fooling with the jack and soiled her freshly pressed uniform wrestling the dirty flat back into the trunk. They couldn’t have been nicer! I took their names and wrote highly complimentary letters to their superiors – all of whom promptly acknowledged them and thanked me for the kind words.
These officers – like my uncle – grasped the significance of “To Protect and Serve.”
I also recognize that the cops – like Gort in “The Day The Earth Stood Still” -- are simply the muscle (the “enforcement”) behind the legislative and statutory “law” enacted by society as a whole. That is, after all, why it’s called “LAW ENFORCEMENT.” And although it could be argued that this society may be morphing into the homonym for “whole” as you read this, these laws are enacted by our alleged “representatives” meeting in generally safe, quiet and opulent chambers far from the increasingly mean streets where the cops ply their trade. If the cops have too many intrusive and abusive laws to enforce, check the nearest mirror for a likeness of the responsible party.
And if the cops ARE abusive to the general citizenry, why aren’t HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of us RAISING UNHOLY HELL at each and every meeting of the responsible governing body? French political philosopher Joseph D'Maistre declared that "Every people gets the government they deserve."
Have we really become the “Nation of Sheep” William Lederer foresaw many years ago? If so, we have little right to object to the shearing. Or the coming slaughter and culling of the flock. And my guess is that the culling will begin with the most troublesome and noisiest sheep. And guess who THAT is?
An old friend is a ranking officer with a large police department. I would rate his love of our freedoms and the Constitution against anyone here at FR. A few years ago, he told me that IF the order to begin some sort of weapons round-up among the general citizenry ever came down from “on high,” we would quickly know about it from the reports of disturbances and gunfire from the neighborhood cop shop: Fully HALF the officers in his department are Second Amendment guys. He and they would be the first to resist such an order – physically if necessary. What should scare us all is the shift in our demographics and the continuing leftist indoctrination by the government schools, making it impossible to know how much longer that ratio – and sentiment – will hold.
A civilized society must also recognize the need to assure that EVERY officer we put out there be as well paid, trained and supervised as possible. The people doing this work ought to have the best training and equipment we can provide them if only to convey to them our belief that their work – and their lives – are as worthy as our own – if only to keep their morale at the highest possible level. Disgruntled malcontents almost always make lousy cops.
Having said that, we must also recognize that EVERY large barrel contains some bad apples -- and SOME cops are “cowboys.” Some are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! -- spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear criminality of the Clintons – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem. There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my Uncle Bob would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” -- referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
IMO no. But the law is the law and it must be enforced by any means necessary in order to preserve order......
You're RIGHT! Pizza deliver boys are held accountable for their actions!!
How did it come to this, pizza deliver boys are MORE likely held accountable than cops???
We have and yes-haw, I'm among the first in line for culling I imagine!!
An old friend is a ranking officer with a large police department. I would rate his love of our freedoms and the Constitution against anyone here at FR. A few years ago, he told me that IF the order to begin some sort of weapons round-up among the general citizenry ever came down from “on high,” we would quickly know about it from the reports of disturbances and gunfire from the neighborhood cop shop: Fully HALF the officers in his department are Second Amendment guys. He and they would be the first to resist such an order – physically if necessary. What should scare us all is the shift in our demographics and the continuing leftist indoctrination by the government schools, making it impossible to know how much longer that ratio – and sentiment – will hold.
People like those you are describing are being replaced as quickly as possible. Time is drwing near my friend.
Having said that, we must also recognize that EVERY large barrel contains some bad apples -- and SOME cops are “cowboys.” Some are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
And these are the people that are replacing all yer good cops. There is a plan behind all of this "coincidence", militarization.
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my Uncle Bob would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” -- referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
I can't say enough about this post. Excelent. Really, thank you!
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