Category Archives: Constitution

UPDATED: Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go POOF

Constitution, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Government, Homeland Security, Law, Race, Racism, Regulation

“Quacking Over Ducksters, As Freedoms Go POOF” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“While the nation fretted over the ouster of one Duckster from the parallel reality of a TV reality show, more of the protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution evaporated.

Just after Christmas, district-court Judge William Pauley ruled that the privacy protections afforded by the Constitution were relative freedoms, not absolutes ones. As such, Fourth-Amendment rights had to be calibrated against a government’s need to maintain a database of records that would (putatively) prevent future terrorist attacks. …

… This is the inglorious history of American freedom and federalism. In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along (as nicely as plaything Justice John G. Roberts did for ObamaCare)—there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, “independent” regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections.

A “civil liberties officer,” for example.

The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another. The idea of a judiciary that would police the executive as an arm of a self-correcting tripartite government was worse than naive.

As “luck” would have it, legislation that flouts the Fourth Amendment was previously in place to provide Pauley with all the positive-law backing the judge needed to justify an anti-constitutional ruling. To wit, the grounds upon which the New York jurist dismissed this ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) case against the NSA were, primarily, “that bulk collection was [already] authorized under existing laws allowing ‘relevant’ data collection to be authorized by secret US courts.”

Here you have the essence of modern-day, Managerial-State America. Natural law, common-law and Constitution have been nullified; buried under the rubble of legislation, statute, precedent, ad infinitum, rights having long-since been outsourced to the “better” judgment of bureaucrats and hired “experts.”

In this case, to Eric Holder’s Department of Justice. …

Read the complete column. “Quacking Over Ducksters, As Freedoms Go POOF” is on WND.

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UPDATE (1/3): Someone is guilty of a performative contradiction. In any event, I’m glad I have not lost the reader who claims he is lost to me. From the COMMENTS @ WMD:

Nys Parkie
• 12 hours ago

Mercer lost me. Was a fan. Now her libertarian squeamish mish-mash of words only offend me. Her article on hunting cut the cord. I, as a conservative libertarian only have this response. Let me live as I choose and don’t demonize me for it. Maybe you (Her) is some type of PETA Vegan in disguise, I don’t know. Hate your mirror and not me.

Reply
Spyker May Nys Parkie
• 10 hours ago

Nys..,

You cannot chastise Ilana for your lack of command of the national language of the USA. She uses no words not from a good dictionary – the only “mish-mash” is the pancake between your ears.

As far as being ‘offended’ – kindly consider carefully what is ostensibly ‘arrogance’ and what is de facto personal insecurities.

To follow Ms Mercer demands no greater effort than reading through ATLAS SHRUGGED in a week…

The Unchallenged Man Of The Year

Constitution, Fascism, Homeland Security, Technology, Terrorism, The State, Uncategorized

Those who are not suspended in the moral abyss with mainstream media already know that Edward Joseph Snowden is the best of America. (Included in the septic mainstream are the interchangeable females on a Fox News idiot’s extravaganza called ‘The Five.’ Said a nimble mind by the name of Andrea Tarantula: ‘If the [National Security Agency] are competent with my information; they can have it.'”)

“At 29, Snowden upended the National Security Agency on its own turf,” heroically bringing to light how—contrary to the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, in particular—the NSA had instituted “a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations.”.

One of the positive outcomes of Snowden’s actions is that “U.S. technology giants including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo,” are taking “extraordinary steps to block the collection of data by their government”:

Led by Google and then Yahoo, one company after another announced expensive plans to encrypt its data traffic over tens of thousands of miles of cable. It was a direct — in some cases, explicit — blow to NSA collection of user data in bulk. If the NSA wanted the information, it would have to request it or circumvent the encryption one target at a time.
As these projects are completed, the Internet will become a less friendly place for the NSA to work. The agency can still collect data from virtually anyone, but collecting from everyone will be harder.
The industry’s response, Smith acknowledged, was driven by a business threat. U.S. companies could not afford to be seen as candy stores for U.S. intelligence. But the principle of the thing, Smith said, “is fundamentally about ensuring that customer data is turned over to governments pursuant to valid legal orders and in accordance with constitutional principles.”

It is to a heroic young man such as this that we should all say: “Thank you for your service, Mr. Snowden.”

Have a happy New Year.
ilana

Ducking Around As Freedoms Go POOF

Constitution, Fascism, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Law, Liberty, The Courts

Face it, the idea of a judiciary that would police the executive as an arm of a self-correcting tripartite government is worse than naive. Rather, it WAS recklessly naive of the American Founding Fathers to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve as a check on one another.

Today, Judge William Pauley, “a Clinton appointee to the Southern District of New York,” ruled that “privacy protections enshrined in the fourth amendment of the US constitution needed to be balanced against a government need to maintain a database of records to prevent future terrorist attacks. ‘The right to be free from searches is fundamental but not absolute,’ he said. ‘Whether the fourth amendment protects bulk telephony metadata is ultimately a question of reasonableness.’”

Pauley argued that al-Qaida’s “bold jujitsu” strategy to marry seventh century ideology with 21st century technology made it imperative that government authorities be allowed to push privacy boundaries.

As if the purview of an American justice is to “marry” American law with Islamic ideology; a US judge must apply the constitution to the facts. In truth, any protection the natural law once provided us has been lost, buried under the rubble of legislation, statute, precedents, whatever.

The Guardian:

The judgement, in a case brought before a district court in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union, directly contradicts the result of a similar challenge in a Washington court last week which ruled the NSA’s bulk collection program was likely to prove unconstitutional and was “almost Orwellian” in scale.
Friday’s ruling makes it more likely that the issue will be settled by the US supreme court, although it may be overtaken by the decision of Barack Obama on whether to accept the recommendations of a White House review panel to ban the NSA from directly collecting such data.

There you have the sum of American freedom and federalism: Legislation that flouts the Fourth Amendment is already in place to provide Pauley with all the positive-law backing he needs to justify an anti-Constitutional ruling.

To wit:

The [Judge dismissed the] ACLU case against the NSA … primarily on the grounds that bulk collection was authorised under existing laws allowing “relevant” data collection to be authorised by secret US courts.

And if the Supreme Court doesn’t play (as nicely as Supremo Roberts played for ObamaCare)—there is always an extra-constitutional committee to kill off/override constitutional protections.

As the nation f-cks around with the huckster Ducksters, the ‘privacy protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution’ just got still weaker, as if this were possible.

Turley Testifies To The Emergence Of An Über-Presidency

Barack Obama, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism

The Anti-Federalists ought to be the nation’s heroes and not its anti-heroes. Libertarians who are with the Anti-Federalists, and who believe the Constitution is a dead letter (check)—and was doomed to so become (check, again)—will find Jonathan Turley’s testimony, Tuesday, as to the danger our “tripartite system of equal branches” finds itself, endearingly naive.

Still, Turley’s testimony before the Committee on the Judiciary is important (and certainly elegantly written). The Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University is perhaps the only honest constitutional scholar on the left that I can think of, since the death of the great Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.).

Turley spoke about the chief executive’s “circumvention of Congress,” about Obama having “crossed the constitutional line between discretionary enforcement and defiance of federal legislation,” of his “use of executive orders to circumvent federal legislation”; of the increasing “shift toward the concentration of executive power” and the consolidation of the “imperial presidency.”

Obama, contends Turley, has “reduced the legislative process to a series of options for presidential selection.” By “claiming the inherent power of both legislation and enforcement, he risks becoming “a virtual government unto himself”; “the very danger that the Constitution was designed to avoid.”

“The Framers were clear that they saw such concentration of power to be a danger to liberty.”

Well, some—the Anti-Federalists—proved that the Framers were either wrong in the direction they took the country, or wrote a very vague document indeed.

MORE.