I had to disappear for a few days to do some reclusive things, but I’m back in time for the holiday. That’s today, National Fourth Amendment Defense Day. I don’t think there will be any half-price sales at Bed Bath & Beyond to mark the occasion, but you can contribute to the festivities by phoning your Senator. Lambert explains:
Have you read the Fourth Amendment lately?
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.
The Fourth Amendment, along with the other amendments to the Constitution that form our Bill of Rights, came into effect on December 15, 1791.
The Framers of our Constitution — and the voters in the states that passed the Bill of Rights — understood how tyranny worked, and they took a dim view of King George breaking into their homes, rummaging through their desks, opening their mail, and reading whatever the Fuck he wanted, whenever the fuck he wanted to, without going to a judge for a warrant, and without having to explain what he expected to find when the warrant was executed. The Framers had already had a bellyful of kings.
The Framers understood tyranny, even though they didn’t have computers in 1791. And if the Framers had computers, it’s plain as day they wouldn’t have wanted King George breaking into their hard disks, rummaging through their desktops, or reading their data—whether the data was email, documents on your hard disk, your telephone calls, your Google searches, or the sites that you surf.
Tyranny is tyranny, no matter the technology.
So it’s simple and crystal clear: The Fourth Amendment means that the government doesn’t get to read your data—to the Framers, “paper”—without a warrant.
It’s simple. And anybody who tries to make it complicated is trying to fuck you.
Well, surprise! The Democrat leadership is trying to fuck you.
Hey, that doesn’t surprise me. Nor does it surprise me that Barack Obama is emerging as a prime enabler of the Democrats’ complicity with the BushCo police state. Just one more reason we need to deal these bums a bitter, bitter blow.
As Glenn Greenwald notes, “Obama is conspicuously missing as his party is on the verge of enacting a radical bill to give the President vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and retroactive amnesty to an entire lawbreaking industry. ”
Let’s see: Obama watches without complaint as the President’s police state powers are ratified, meanwhile anticipating his own election to the office on the backs of fanatical believers who think he can do no wrong, and at the head of a party that has already subordinated its entire national machinery to his personal campaign. Why do I think this is not a coincidence?
Posted by Violet in Election 2008, Politics
