But when we get to four or five reported rapes in different cities, no, I’m thinking it’s not all the work of Tonye Iketubosin, the only person to soil the good name of the otherwise law-abiding protestors.
Is that enough cites for you? Would you like more?
Are these your “warm up” posts, then? Getting ready to deliver something of substance, are you? Yes, “Gestapo tactics” is a wild exaggeration. That’s all you got? At least Bricker has photographic evidence of thousands of OWS demonstrators shitting on police cars. By police cars. Maybe only hundreds. OK, a few dozen. One, actually. But on direct orders from OWS Central Committee!
No. You are apparently blinded to the fact that your beloved and Noble Protesters would ever stropp so low as sexual assault, or perhaps you’re willinjg to forgive it all in service of the Higher Cause. I have no idea.
But the truth is that there have been rapes, and attempted rapes, and actual shitting next to a police car. You used to be proud of “the reality based community.” Try rejoining it.
Off topic altogether, clicking your second link took me straight to a fake “Windows security” bot. Don’t know anything more, but danger, will robinson…
You realize that you are justifying intimidation tactics by the police against people by pointing to crimes committed by entirely different people? Or are you thinking that the police who burst the doors down Zachary Dempster’s doors were simply being pro-active in preventing him from raping someone?
It’s all very confusing. The police burst down someone’s door, using the pretext of an unpaid ticket. This was done in order to intimidate them, so that they would not protest government policy.
You equate this somehow to other protesters who committed rape in the past.
But I was answering the rhetorical question “Who’s side are you on?” The two sides presumably being the police, in general, and the protesters, in general.
If the focus narrows to specific individuals, I obviously may have different answers. But as a general principle, I think the OWS protests are foolish and carry with them the potential (and realized delivery!) of violence and ugliness. So as a general principle, I’m not sympathetic to their continuation. On the other hand, I also want to the police to follow the law.
But when you start talking about pretexts, you lose me. The police may wish to investigate a car that just pulled away from a known open-air drug market, and they observe a broken tailight and initiate a traffic stop. This is pretextual – they are narcotics cops and have no interest in policing traffic violations. But it’s legal – the police (any police) are allowed to stop and issue summons to someone with a broken tailight. So even though it’s a pretext, it’s a legal pretext.
I’m fine with that: the law is the way society creates and defines the bounderies of acceptable behavior from its members.
So Ihave to ask one simple question: was the police tactic legal?
Yes, it was exactly as legal as the Stasi imprisoning people for telling jokes about the government.
It was wrong, and should be opposed by anyone who respects the right of people to assemble freely, but legal? Sure. Congratulations.
BTW, the bully on the playground who got the big kid to get the other kids lunch money? Perfectly legal. He did nothing. Said nothing to those kids. They gave the money of their own free will. Perfectly legal.
Why do you believe you had the right to not be monitored by trap and trace in, say, 1987?
In other words, you point to the PatriotAct as though its section about trap and trace took away a right you used to have. I am asking you why you think you had that right before the Patriot Act came along.
And by the way, you misquote the Constitution. It provides:
Probably just an accident that you left out the one word that hurts your invocation of the right, huh?
But that’s the flaw: it’s not legal. See, we know that’s unacceptable behavior, and so we pass laws forbidding it. Extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion are crimes… so, yeah, the opposite of what you said.
Perhaps you could identify what portion of that answers my question. As I read it, for example, you never had a right to send e-mail without its header being monitored. The Patriot Act clarifies this. So when do you say you had a right to send e-mail without the FBI being able to look at the headers, as long as they certified it was relevant to an investigation?
“…this provision authorizes the equivalent of a blank warrant: the court issues the order, and the law enforcement agent fills in the places to be searched. That is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment’s explicit requirement that warrants be written "particularly describing the place to be searched.”
So, the bar is as long as you do not like a particular group and the police act legally you are cool with the police kicking in doors on a pretext?
Wow…by that measure we can do this for a lot of things.
Lawyers poll near the bottom of most distrusted professions in the US. More, lawyers carry with them the potential (and realized delivery!) of committing crimes! Clearly an unsympathetic bunch!
So, given that the police can and should find pretexts (say an unpaid ticket) for kicking in the doors of attorneys and questioning them. As long as the police have a legal pretext this would be fine by you right?
I’m sorry, where did I say I was quoting the constitution?
Actually it is. Until charges are laid, a conviction is made and all legal appeals are exhausted, I will continue to argue and argue and argue that such behavior is entirely legal.
Same here. i have come to really hate that lame excuse for an argument. It is lazy, stupid, and shits all ovr the constitution. It is the sort of attitude that allows abuses to happen and allows tyrants to rise to power.