rumitoid

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects (including vehicles), against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Trump, Barr, and Sessions agree this Right of all Americans is to them passe. How we devolved on the Right is here a marker: We no longer are concerned, and perhaps few ever were, that these roadway stops for drunk drivers violated this right; there is no probable cause. We should have every right not to roll down our window or even stop...except for the stalled traffic. As a patriot, we should refuse all cooperation with these stops...unless, of course, we crash into police vehicles or barricades or other vehicles while searching for breath mints or wh**ever.

And another right is blatantly violated, by presuming guilt for refusing to incriminate oneself in not taking a test for drugs or alcohol. Yes, driving is a privilege and not a right, so it seems such demand is acceptable and just, yet that vehicle is ours, a private and inviolable place, and the Constitution overrides such arguments as it being a "privilege," a specious argument. But we just allowed it, got used to it. "Hey, why bring up the Constitution's niggling, nitpicky crap when we can keep our roads safer? It's saving lives, goshdarnitall. Freaking Liberal whiners. How are you c****es gonna keep the roads safe?" Minor point today, given Civil Asset Forfeiture and the Patriot Act.

Industrial strength attacks on the 4th Amendment, the presumption of innocence, and the right to privacy. (The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy. The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information.)

Civil asset forfeiture is a glaring violation of due process of law that creates opponents across the political spectrum.

Nadine Strossen, then-president of the American Civil Liberties Union, attacked it in congressional testimony, declaring that “all civil asset forfeiture schemes violate fundamental constitutional rights, including the right not to be deprived of property without due process of law and the right to be free from punishment that is disproportionate to the offense.”

Civil asset forfeiture is so blatantly unfair and prone to abuse that Institute for Justice attorney Robert Johnson wrote that he was eager to find anyone willing to defend it. Johnson finally heard a feeble defense from Jeff Sessions, our new attorney general and at the time a U.S. Senator. Disturbingly, Sessions’ “defense” of civil asset forfeiture amounted to nothing more than an assertion that the law is all right because most of the people who lose property are dope dealers. Even if that were true (and it isn’t), it still fails to address the due process problems inherent in these laws.

Kevyn

They should end civil asset forfeiture right after it is used under RICO to confiscate the Trump empire for its ongoing criminal conspiracy to defraud the people of the United States.

rumitoid

Good point.