I encountered two young veterans last week, as hot about the current violation of national security as I am. They too remember taking the oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States. In all sobriety, I suggest the Supreme Court is forgetting that oath. Last week’s news provides an example.
The Supreme Court rendered a judgement in Florence v Burlington that it is OK to strip-search a person if they find themselves in prison, even if by mistake. The Supreme Court decided that prison regulations trump the constitution in the above case, of a black man who was riding as a passenger in his wife’s BMW and the police computer erroneously said he had a warrant out for his arrest, when he had already paid the traffic fine.
The judgement is pertinent in the context of the Occupy movement this spring with many people seeking to assemble and petition their government for redress of grievances. Those people are being intimidated by the law that they may be strip searched for engaging their first amendment rights.
The fourth amendment, is explicit: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, 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.”
It guarantees the right of someone, anyone, to be secure “in their person” from search unless served with a search warrant, signed by a judge naming whom is to be searched, and for what particular things, and stating the probable cause. The founders included this to prohibit mass intimidation by any agency of law. I pray you can get this very meaning from the words of the fourth amendment quoted above. I hope you can commit those words to memory. It could save you.
I believe that We the People can put these things together; we stand up to the Supreme Court and say: ”Black is not White!” The people are not secure if they can be strip-searched for whimsy, or by mistake, and without probable cause. The fourth amendment says as much!
I write this because I want people, We the People, who give consent and tax money to be governed, to indeed be governed according to law of the land, the constitution as Article VI states. (Not the law of some institution, be it the Burlington prison or the park service). I write this so that we can know, and state our rights. For if we do not stand up for them, they will go away…. as they seem to be doing, with judicial sanction before our eyes.
I refer you to the previous post if you have not read it. It concerns the legal case, again before the Supreme Court in which President Obama wants a brand new power to be granted to the government, namely to compel people to make a purchase from a private company. For one to read and understand the constitution, this seems an open and shut case, an argument I made. But if we all sit back and expect the “experts” to decide, we are going the way of the Reichstag in the 1930′s. The Germans are not, nor were they, a flippant people. But by relinquishing their authority to the ‘experts’ they succumbed to a very dark leadership.
Hence, I ask that you write your paper, your Senator and mention to your friends the document that was begun with the words We, is being countermanded by justices who took an oath to protect it.
