Coyote: Your bias is understood. However, to tell me (and every-damned-body else) that the country is going to hell in a truck due to the crime rate is absurd. Particularly since the crime rate has actually decreased over the last ten years. I will grant you that there are those who are afraid to go out at night, but the power is within their hands to take back their neighborhoods. Not through vigilante justice, but simply by taking a stand and working with the local constabulary to eliminate those who are part of the problem. If our own AvB wants to cower in fear, though, who am I to try and stop him?
I don’t want to quibble with you, GLWasteful, because I suspect we are basically in agreement. I did not say the country was going to hell in a handbasket because of high crime rates. I said many areas have high crime rates.
Oh please. If you say that a policy is against the Constituion, and the Supreme Court says it isn’t, who is right??!? If you keep claiming your right, its obvious you think your smarter than the Supreme Court. Not likely.
They are. They are electing leaders that can make changes in school boards and laws, like they did in Texas.
The SC already has allowed testing of all students who are in atheletics. Want to bet they let this one stand too? If they do will you admit you are wrong?
As a Fordham law graduate, and lawyer who at least likes to think that he knows what he is talking about, I feel compelled come to defense of the quoted Fordham law student. I suspect his or her answer was a proper law school type answer, correct as far as it goes, but taken entirely out of context.
First of all I must say that almost everything that AvenueB says is flat out wrong, and highly disturbing to boot. And his conclusions about self-incrimination just simply miss the point.
But in a more abstract view, the Fifth Amendment does only apply to testimony that is incriminating (i.e. potentially subjecting the testifying witness to criminal liability). The strongest protection of the Fifth Amendment is its prohibition against requiring a criminal defendant from testifying against himself in his own trial.
However, outside the context of the testimony of a criminal defendant in his own trial, someone can only invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege if there the possibility that the testimony given may subject the testifying person to criminal liability (i.e. it is incriminating).
One big area that this is used in the criminal area is in testimonial immunity. Prosecutors will frequently give a witness who is refusing to testify under the Fifth Amendment immunity for that testimony, saying in effect that whatever you say cannot be used against you. An immunized witness can be forced to testify, because, under the immunity grant, the testimony cannot legally incriminate the witness.
Another example is that O.J. Simpson was required to testify in his civil trial, which took place after his criminal aquittal. Because he could not be retried for murder under the Double Jeopardy clause, his testimony about what happened the night of the murder cannot be incriminating (in the sense of subjecting him to criminal liability). If the civil trial were before the criminal, he could not be forced to testify, because he would still be potentially subject to criminal liability.
More broadly, without the requirement that testimony be incriminating before a witness can “plead the Fifth,” any witness would be able refuse to testify in any matter. Although the practical aspects of determining where the line is can be tricky, before the Fifth Amendment can be invoked there must be at least the specter of criminal liability.
That all being said, AvenueB-dude’s Fifth Amendment jurisprudence (if it can be dignified as such) is, put politely, all wet.
AvB: Except that the Supremes haven’t said that the policy in question is right. As a matter of fact, you acknowledge as much later in your post.
If this case makes it as far as the Supreme Court, then I believe that it will be shot down. As it so richly deserves. If they say that everything is ducky, then not only will I apologize to you, I will buy you lunch. How’s that grab ya?
This is known as “reading more into a post than you should have” please try not to do anything so brazenly idiotic as this in the future. Yes, I am right. I am also neither qualified, nor willing, to serve as a justice.
You then go on to quote an entire statement, yet only answer the part of it which is, and has been for some time, a given. Yes, there are legislators elected who have ideas that appall me. I work to elect others to their positions, though. That said, this case involves a school board, not a body charged with creation of law. Now, do you find fault with my contention that the “rights” extended to criminals were always there, and have only been pointed out to them in the last 34 years? If so, please respond.
Anyway, the Fact of the matter is that they are not being given the right to refuse the test, if they do so they are presumed guilty. It can be argued that if they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear, but these are kids. Do you want them to grow up thinking they cant stand up against what they think is wrong?
J
“trapped by the girl in the mirror and a bed that calls my name
standing on my own yet again, unabashed by the
cyclone of morons that abound this place
shhh, i think they’ve found me
hiding in their closet listening in on their
idiocy and mocking every phoneme
and allophone spilling from their diseased beings.”
Quoted from “Idiots”, by Prose
Dammit, people, this is the Pit!! Let’s get back to flaming this goose stepping mother fucker! This gross ignoramus makes me embarassed of my generation. Don’t worry, techchik, we aren’t all as misguided as this naive, gullible, brainwashed Nazi. I thought NYU was a good school. Apparently not. Wake the fuck up, AvB-dude! Not all of what you learned in DARE is the truth. I might try to see things from your perspective, but I don’t think I could get my head that far up my ass. (I’m not sure who I’m borrowing from, but it’s a great line, couldn’t resist.) Stop wiping your pimply ass with the Consitution and try reading it for a change! I can only hope that you get your way, and subsequently you are falsely arrested and convicted, and get the butt reaming you deserve from Bubba and his bull queer friends! Eat shit and move to Pyongyang if your so fucking scared of all the big bad criminals.
