Could a "Pro-Constitution" coalition protect U.S. citizens' rights?

Great Debates
1

In the last few years law enforcement in the U.S. have engaged in various end-arounds and dodges to avoid the requirements of the Constitution that I think could produce a widespread coalition that might actually generate enough political muscle to restore some rights to U.S. citizens. Some of the offenses being committed are:
[ul]
[li]RICO act – Federal DAs have been using this one to get around the Constitutional protection preventing spouses from having to testify against one another. Essentially they threaten the spouse with being prosecuted under the RICO statutes if she doesn’t roll and testify against her husband. Since her testimony is “voluntary” it doesn’t violate the Constitution.[/li][li]Excessive fines – The thread in General Questions entitled “My brother was arrested for solicitation” inspired this one. In New York, if you’re caught soliciting (or with drugs) the cops can take your car from you, which amounts to fines in the $20,000 range for misdemeanors. The DAs “get around” the Constitution by trying the CAR separately in a civil action (i.e., “New York SVU vs. 2002 Lexus SUV”).[/li][li]Patriot Act – We all know the drill on this one – the cops now have extensive wiretapping rights, ability to search people’s video store rental records, library records, and scan the entire Internet for whatever they like. It’s one glorious fishing expedition, folks! What you may not know is that these powers, granted under assurances that they would only be used against terrorists, are now being used against ordinary criminals.[/li][/ul]

My thought is that with the police and the DAs assaulting the Constitution so vigorously and in so many different ways, that it may now be possible to build a coalition of pro-U.S. Constitution people who could unite under a common banner to restoring Constitutional freedoms to the American people, which would actually have enough clout to smack down all the law enforcement types who aren’t all that crazy about freedom. There are undoubtedly other rampant abuses of the Constitution that I’m leaving out, but I think this’ll do for starters.

So, I’m thinking People for the American Way, the ACLU and the American Library Assn. would be on board, but I’m thinking some conservative and libertarians orgs could go for this in a big way as well. Suggestions?

2

I’m thinking that “Protect the mafia, johns and terrorists” is not going to be a platform that has broad appeal.

3

The privilege regarding spousal testimony is not in the Constitution.

You can read US v. Harper for a discussion of the constitutionality of forfeitures under the Constitution. There are limits.

You may have a point about the Patriot Act, but I’ve yet to see a Constitutional challenge to it in a specific case.

All that being said, you should vote libertarian.

4

Ah, so you’re one of those who’d stand silently by and let the Constitution be destroyed by people who wave various boogeymen in our faces to frighten us into letting them do it. Gotcha.

5

From appearances, he’s one of those waving the boogeymen.

re “Vote Libertarian,” alas, the party isn’t sufficiently organized to warrant a vote yet (although they do deserve your support in other ways, so that they can become organized!)

Meanwhile, an ACLU membership will, on balance, do more good than harm.

Trinopus

6
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As Hamlet ably pointed out, there is no federal rule of evidence regarding the spousal privilege. Even without a threat of RICO prosecution, a federal prosecutor may compel testimony from a spouse… leading me to ask for a cite for your first proposition.

I can only conclude that I was typing in invisible ink when I made my comments in that thread. To remind you, I said that it was quite possible for a civil forfeiture action to trigger Eighth Amendment protections. I said that the seizure of a car is not per se excessive, but a particular case may be found to be excessive.

Your gripe here appears not to be a violation of the Constitution, but merely a difference of opnion over what constitutes “excessive”.

Ah, yes - we all know this one.

Let’s look in detail at what you’ve said. The “extensive wiretapping rights” allow the police to wiretap a person instead of a phone number. Under the previous rules, a new warrant had to be obtained for each phone number monitored. In an age where I can buy a cell phone and activate it ten minutes later, that change makes perfact sense to me.

Search video store rental records - cite?

Library records - yes, but I’m not prepared to condemn this just yet; I know of no principle of law that gives you an expectation of privacy in your library habits. I recognize, however, that reasonable people may disagree on this point.

Scan the entire Internet for whatever they like? So can you. The long-standing principle is that the police may legally go where anyone else may go. That includes scanning the Internet. Why would we possibly limit police in ways that we don’t limit YOU?

  • Rick
8

If it’s not in the Constitution, why are the Feds having to use RICO to get around it? If it’s a Fed statute, they can just get it changed. If it’s a state or local statute, there’s no jurisdiction. I don’t specifically recall a Constitutional provision there, however, but they’re definitely assaulting SOMETHING when they force spouses to testify against one another. Maybe just basic human decency.

You can read US v. Harper for a discussion of the constitutionality of forfeitures under the Constitution. There are limits.

I don’t know what economic strata you are from, but to me, $20,000 is an enormous amount of money, especially as a fine for a misdemeanor offense. Don’t cite statute law at me, I’m not a lawyer and could give a flip about it, give me an argument that makes good common sense if you have one.

**All that being said, you should vote libertarian. **

I would if I did not have the sense that many libertarians would gladly watch poor people starve to death while maintaining the sanctity of their precious ideology.

9

Libertarians believe in something called voluntary charity, rather than the fake compassion of putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them to fork over 40% of their income.

They also believe in individuals’ responsibilities to take care of themselves and their families. I know such ideas as responsibility are out of fashion, condemned as “unrealistic”. But isn’t it funny how people weren’t starving before the Great Society? Isn’t it funny that poverty has not decreased much if at all?

Libertarians believe that the best way to help the poor is to stop government from breaking their legs in the first place, rather than today’s method of breaking their leg and then giving them a crutch.

10

I did a search and most of the references I found were to state law. I do clearly remember a case from frontline in which federal prosecutors used RICO to try to get aruond spousal immunity, then tossed the wife in jail for ten years when she refused to roll using the threatened RICO, even though they had no evidence of her actually being involved with the crime in question.

I can only conclude that I was typing in invisible ink when I made my comments in that thread. To remind you, I said that it was quite possible for a civil forfeiture action to trigger Eighth Amendment protections. I said that the seizure of a car is not per se excessive, but a particular case may be found to be excessive.

No, you were typing in moot ink. If we have cases before us where law authorities are confiscating $20,000 cars for misdemeanor offenses, I think we can reasonably conclude that they do it because they think they can get away with it. And Eighth Amendment appeal might or might not work, but surely the local authorities have SOME confidence that it wouldn’t, or they would not have bothered to confiscate the car, would they?

Your gripe here appears not to be a violation of the Constitution, but merely a difference of opnion over what constitutes “excessive”.

Boy you must be loaded if you think $20,000 is “mere.”

Let’s look in detail at what you’ve said. The “extensive wiretapping rights” allow the police to wiretap a person instead of a phone number. Under the previous rules, a new warrant had to be obtained for each phone number monitored. In an age where I can buy a cell phone and activate it ten minutes later, that change makes perfact sense to me.

I think the thing that has civil libertarians cranked is that it also relaxes the grounds on which the feds have to get wiretap.

Search video store rental records - cite?

It does. Here’s a cite from the ACLU:

http://archive.aclu.org/congress/l102301i.html

Library records - yes, but I’m not prepared to condemn this just yet; I know of no principle of law that gives you an expectation of privacy in your library habits. I recognize, however, that reasonable people may disagree on this point.

sounds like we do disagree.

Scan the entire Internet for whatever they like? So can you. The long-standing principle is that the police may legally go where anyone else may go. That includes scanning the Internet. Why would we possibly limit police in ways that we don’t limit YOU?

Because I don’t have the power to put you in a cage if I don’t like what you write.

  • Rick **
    [/QUOTE]
11

:dubious: Let me be the first, but certainly not the last, to say cite?!?

12

You got your excuses for not helping the poor all lined up. I’m just not buying any of them.

13

People don’t need excuses to not help the poor. They have no legal responsibility towards them.

The moral responsibility they have depends on their personal views – views which, at least in theory, ought not to be imposed on them by others.

I’m sure you have plenty of excuses to justify your not helping preserve Earth’s ecosystems, which are orders of magnitude more important than any amount of human life.

14

The problem with a “Pro-Constitution” movement is that there’s no universal agreement on what the articles of the Constitution really mean, or how they should be applied. There’s not even agreement amongst the experts (the Supreme Court, for instance). A lot of it is up to interpretation. For every person that says the 2nd amendment means anyone (relatively speaking) can bear arms, you’ll have another person that says no, it only means in the context of a well-regulated militia (i.e. a National Guard type thing). So you’re back to the unending squabbling that we have now. For every odious law enforcement tactic there’s a constitutionally acceptable explanation. If there isn’t, then it gets thrown out. Eventually.

15

What extensive wiretapping rights? Do you have a cite? Preferably one that refers to actual laws that have been passed and not some left wing nutjob conspiracy page.

Instead of having to begin anew the warrant process for a new phone of a suspect, they can now get a phone warrant for the suspect that “follows” them from phone to phone and state to state. In a time when cell phones and communications in general are increasing at a rapid rate, this is entirely sensible. A warrant is still required for every tapped phone.

The ability to search people’s video store rental and library records? First of all, cite please? Do they need a warrant? Even if not, what expectation of privacy do you have at a public library or video store?

Finally, you claim that “they” have the ability to “scan the internet for whatever they like”. Give me a break. I can scan the internet for whatever I like right now. It’s called google. WTF are you talking about?

16

Ah, the old put your fingers in your ears and chant ‘LA, LA, LA, I’m not listening!’ argument. Very mature. :rolleyes:

This worked in the third grade when you wanted to win a debate. Here at the SDMB, it means you are the one who just lost.

17

mack brings up a good point about much of the constitution being up for debate.

However, the overall language and meaning of the bill of rights is very simple and clear. It’s MHO, for example, that the anti-gun folks know that the second ammendment means all Americans have the right to bear arms. They just disagree so stronly that they are willing to use the technicality of the ‘militia’ clause to ignore the whole thing.

Plus, there are some others such as the 10th ammendment that are very clear. However, it’s just been completely ignored.

The reason that no one pays attention to the 10th is a lack of action to support it. There is no ACLU or NRA fighting to protect it, so it falls to the sidelines.

I think a non-partisan group that was dedicated to the preservation of the constitution through lobbying would be a great thing. Of course, this is supposed to be the job of the courts, but having a lobby fighting for it as well wouldn’t hurt.

To get away from Evil Captor’s silly Patriot act bashing and mention a good example, we have the passing of the blatantly unconstitutional Campaign Finance Reform bill for starters. It’s good that we can rely on the mostly conservative (and constitutionalist) USSC won’t let something like this slide. However, the executive and legislative branches should have been afraid to even try something like this. That’s where a lobbying organization would be useful.

18

To follow up on what mack said: calling it a “pro-Constitution” coalition is absolutely meaningless. Everyone else is just as much in favor of “the Constitution” as you are. Even John Ashcroft.

19

Cite?

So what? If the Eighth Amendment appeal does work, you have failed to demonstrate your initial proposition; intead, you’ve shown that the police TRIED to violate the Constitution, but that the system worked as intended to protect the rights guaranteed thereunder.

This is an excellent example of the fallacy of equivocation - I used the word “mere” to refer to the fact that you’re upset with the definition of the word excessive as opposed to the failure to provide any kind of due process. In your response, you suggest I used the word ‘mere’ to refer to the size of penalty.

To address that argument: the key is proportionality. If a $20,000 car is used to haul $500,000 worth of cocaine, I have no problem seeing it seized. If you can show an actual case fo a $20,000 penalty levied for a misdemeanor conviction that survived appeals, please do so.

No, it doesn’t. Please cite the section of the Patriot Act that does this.

From your OP:

From the ACLU link you provide:

The ACLU link says, correctly, that this search power may only be used when the FBI certifies that the target is foreign intelligence investigation, or an investigation to protect against international terrorism, or clandestine intelligence activities – NOT “ordinary criminals”. Yet you cited this as a source in support of your proposition that the search powers are being used now against ordinary criminals. Why would you do that?

Nor do the FBI agents. So it sounds like you agree with the power to search the whole Internet for anyone without such power; the FBI lacks that power.

Syllogisms rarely get that easy.

  • Rick
20

Fortunately, it appears that “reasonable people” include the legislatures of 48 states and the District of Columbia (as well as the Office of the Attorney General of the State of Hawaii and the Office of the Attorney General of the State of Kentucky).