Opinions from Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal are of interest to a variety of people. Lawyers read them in order to learn what the law is with respect to issues that have been ruled on by the Courts in the Circuits in which they live. The poor, who live within the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, read them to learn how their constitutional rights differ from those of the well off. They were reminded of this in August by the same court that had tutored them three years earlier in the case of Rochio Sanchez v. County of San Diego.
Sanchez was decided by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in April 2007 and the U.S. Supreme Court announced in November of that year that it would not review the court’s decision. The case stands for the proposition that it is OK to search people’s homes without a warrant. Before my readers rush to add strong locks to all their doors I must reassure them. The case has no applicability to my readers. Their homes are protected by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that bans unreasonable searches and seizures. The people in California whose homes are not protected by the Fourth Amendment are those on welfare.
“Since the FDA only has jurisdiction over compounds involved in ‘interstate commerce,’ they have no jurisdiction over our kitchens—yet. Should my client lose this case, however, the FDA will have set a precedent to invade the privacy of our homes.”
- Attorney Nancy Lord, M.D.
Daniel Smith is between the proverbial “rock and a hard place.” For the last couple of years, he has been selling “MMS Professional,” a high-quality sodium chlorite solution used to purify water. He has also been selling citric acid, a food acid similar to that found in lime or lemon juice.
Daniel also sold books, CDs and DVDs produced by others that explained how mixing sodium chlorite and citric acid produce chlorine dioxide, a chemical commonly used to purify water. Chlorine dioxide also is an effective mouthwash (Compendium of Continuing Education in Dentistry Vol.21, pp. 241-248, 2000).
You have two assholes. One is a citizen, he’s got the right to be an asshole. They other is a public servant. He doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have the right to be an asshole.
As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets.
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.
If you want to know what tyranny is like, look around.
The national government — specifically the executive branch — can do pretty much what it wants. It could bomb Iran tomorrow without a declaration of war from Congress. It can — and does — conduct secret wars and covert operations against countries that have done nothing to us. Of course, they are secret only to the ignorant taxpayers who must finance them and perhaps suffer when the provoked retaliation occurs. It can have men behind PlayStation consoles in Nevada fire Hellfire missiles from aerial drones on people in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.
This tyrannical government can send any foreigner picked up anywhere in the world to third countries known for torturing prisoners. It can hold people accused of nothing indefinitely in prisons in Cuba and Afghanistan and torture them into making false confessions. It can conduct a war crimes trial in a military kangaroo court for a man, Omar Khadr, held captive for eight years after he was picked up at the age of 15 during a U.S. assault on villagers near Kabul. His torture-induced “confessions” will be admissible. All this is in violation of commitments under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict not to treat children in war as though they were adults.
It can assassinate even American citizens abroad without a scent of due process.
In May of last year, David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus from 2006 to 2008, co-authored a strategic analysis (”Death From Above, Outrage Down Below,” New York Times, May 17, 2009). He emphasized that the "public outrage" among Pakistan's civilians caused by our drone attacks "is hardly limited to the region in which they take place."
Extensively reported by the news media, “the persistence of these attacks on Pakistani territory offends people’s deepest sensibilities, alienates them from their government and contributes to Pakistan's instability."
A majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court seems to believe in free speech for corporations when it comes to influencing elections, but not so much for actual people trying to end wars.
Five months after the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the First Amendment guarantees corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money in political campaigns, the Court issued a ruling making the First Amendment less sacrosanct when it comes to private citizens advocating for peaceful conflict resolution.
In a 6-3 ruling on June 21, the Court upheld a federal law that criminalizes giving “material support,” including providing “expert advice,” to groups that have been designated by the State Department as terrorist organizations.
Los Angeles photo activist Shawn Nee has once again demonstrates the importance of wearing a video camera around your neck when photographing police.
Last year, Nee made national headlines when he videotaped a Los Angeles Sheriff’s deputy who had detained him for taking pictures inside the city’s subway system.
The deputy accused him of taking photos of the subway system in order to sell them to Al Qaeda. The deputy never noticed the Vievu camera hanging in full view around Nee’s neck.
Freedom for Sale is the best synopsis of the recent collapse of restraints on government power. John Kampfner, the editor of Britain’s New Statesman, traveled the world seeking to answer the question: why have freedoms been so easily traded in return for security or prosperity?
Kampfner begins his tour in Singapore, where he was born. Lee Kuan Yew’s 30-year reign as prime minister begat an authoritarian regime that combined high economic growth with endless petty impingements on personal liberties. Lee’s sense of entitlement to power knew no bounds—he even chose spouses for senior government workers and dictated how many children they should have. With immaculate streets and the world’s highest rate of executions, Singapore earned the nickname “Disneyland with the death penalty.”
