[lordofduct]

farrell2k, on 03 March 2013 - 11:57 AM, said:

OK, and if and when the border search exception and extended border search exceptions to the fourth amendment are successfully challenged and are struck down as violations of the fourth amendment by the Supreme court, I will then agree with you and everyone else that these people rights are being violated. I have a feeling it will be a long time.

There is no common ground, because am dealing with reality, as opposed to assumed reality, a reality where one cannot violate a right that does not exist.

You do know that our slamming it is us challenging it. Usually when a challenge is made, a group awareness has to come with it.

Or would you say that slavery is ok and fine until someone goes and successfully challenges it in court?


[edit]
I just noticed craig pretty much made the same analogy that I did.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 03 March 2013 - 11:24 AM

[atraub]

Admittedly, I haven't read ALL the responses, but I've read quite a few and skimmed some more on top of that. I understand what you guys are saying. I have a few thoughts but they're all kind of jumbled and it's hard to get them all out... so bear with me...

Spoiler

Immigration is its own big ol' can of ugly beans and I'm humble enough to admit that there's so much misinformation going around, I truly don't feel confident to give an opinion on it one way or the other... so I'm sidestepping that completely.

Some of you seem to feel that the cops are asking to search the person's vehicle for "good" reasons and therefore it's ok. Glossing over the motivations for such searches for a moment, look at how the officers are going about it. Within the first 15 seconds of the video, an officer tells the driver "You have to answer me or I will detain you." As the video demonstrates, this is a lie; it's a move used to coerce information from the driver via threats. Should the driver answer in a way that is self-incriminating (as we all know, even benign statements can be turned sinister with enough gymnastics) then the officers do have probable cause. For example, if someone had said "Yes, I am a US citizen" but sounded nervous, the police could have called that nervousness probable cause to confirm the speaker's nationality. Thus, in lieu of probable cause, the police are trying to trick these people into creating it. When else should police be allowed to use this sort of coercion? Is it ever really ok?

The obvious response is "but who was really hurt?". Well, no one is physically wounded however our rights are assaulted. Coercing Americans to yield their 4th amendment right protecting them from unreasonable search and seizure is a violation. Whether or not doing this on the border is a "good" thing is not the issue here as these people are 30 miles from the border and the officer even admits that he has no reason to suspect that the driver crossed the border. Thus, the fact that they're "near" the border is all relative, subjective, and ultimately moot.

I think it's easy for a lot of us to feel so removed from the situation that we don't get outraged. I can't help but chuckle and wonder if any of the people who are OK with this are the same guys who hate the TSA for lovingly stroking our freedom.

This post has been edited by atraub: 03 March 2013 - 01:56 PM

[farrell2k]

lordofduct, on 03 March 2013 - 06:23 PM, said:

farrell2k, on 03 March 2013 - 11:57 AM, said:

OK, and if and when the border search exception and extended border search exceptions to the fourth amendment are successfully challenged and are struck down as violations of the fourth amendment by the Supreme court, I will then agree with you and everyone else that these people rights are being violated. I have a feeling it will be a long time.

There is no common ground, because am dealing with reality, as opposed to assumed reality, a reality where one cannot violate a right that does not exist.

Or would you say that slavery is ok and fine until someone goes and successfully challenges it in court?
at I did.

The words OK and legal are not interchangeable. Slavery was legal, and many wanted it that way, until the passing of the 13th amendment, but personally I never thought it ok.

It is also legal for Koch industries to put God's know how much pollution into the air, ground, and water, but I doubt anyone would claim it is ok. However, that is challenged, it is still legal.

Craig328, on 03 March 2013 - 05:27 PM, said:

Listen, explaining it again isn't the issue. Everyone understands your position. You're pretty much saying a right isn't a right as long as a court says it isn't one even when the Constitution says otherwise. I get your point: the highest court trumps the Constitution. It's just that you're wrong because it doesn't.

Apparently explaining it again is the issue. Your rights are not black and white. You do not get to just read the 4th and proclaim that every single search everywhere in any situation requires a warrant, or anything else. The 4th amendment protects you from "unreasonable" search and seizures. The supreme court interprets the constitution and your rights within it and itself determines what is reasonable and unreasonable. Nothing more; nothing less. It doesn't matter how YOU interpret it. All your rights are regulated, and all have exceptions of some form. The border search and extended border search are two. Automobile and personal searches in situation where police believe something is suspicious is another. i.e. They smell pot on you or in your car in a traffic stop. Don't like it? Voting is the only way to change it.

[h4nnib4l]

Quote

You do not get to just read the 4th and proclaim that every single search everywhere in any situation requires a warrant

Straw man.

This post has been edited by h4nnib4l: 06 March 2013 - 07:40 AM

[lordofduct]

You're saying that this is legal, so we shouldn't get up in arms about it.

I was saying slavery was legal, so logically your position would be to not get up in arms about it.

That's what I meant by 'OK'.

Now you clarify by saying you would get up in arms, because you don't agree with slavery.

Aw aw aw...

We don't agree with border patrols doing what they do miles from the border (at the border is another thing, totally normal there, it's the border). You do. So it's a conflict of opinion. And our opinion is not invalid, just as your opinion of slavery is not invalid.

[jon.kiparsky]

"Reasonable" has been adjudicated. In my own words - not quoting any particular source - it requires a particular suspicion that the particular person is involved with a particular crime. Hence, an officer who hears "stop, thief!" and sees a person running from the scene may reasonably chase and detain that person and search them. They will have to defend their actions, and if the situation is as described, then they will not have a great trouble doing do.
What we see in that video is a dragnet, which no civilized person can defend. It's on a par with stop-and-frisk in New York, or the cops who used to pull over Grateful Dead fans on tour in the south. "Sorry, son, but we saw that you had a taillight out. Going to have to search you vehicle" "My taillight's not out" <crunch> "It is now."

I'm not a knee-jerk anti-government type, I think there's a role for government in society, and government can do a lot without bothering me. There are not a lot of things that make me queasy this way. Prior restraint on speech or expression is one. Suppression of voting is another. But allowing cops to stop you randomly as you go about your day is absolutely on that list.

[modi123_1]

ugh.. now I have to do research.

Fun reading while I do:
http://www.aclu.org/...rch-and-seizure

Quote

Inland stoppings and searches in areas away from the borders are a different matter altogether. Thus, in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 92 the Court held that a warrantless stop and search of defendant's automobile on a highway some 20 miles from the border by a roving patrol lacking probable cause to believe that the vehicle contained illegal aliens violated the Fourth Amendment. Similarly, the Court invalidated an automobile search at a fixed checkpoint well removed from the border; while agreeing that a fixed checkpoint probably gave motorists less cause for alarm than did roving patrols, the Court nonetheless held that the invasion of privacy entailed in a search was just as intrusive and must be justified by a showing of probable cause or consent. 93 On the other hand, when motorists are briefly stopped, not for purposes of a search but in order that officers may inquire into their residence status, either by asking a few questions or by checking papers, different results are achieved, so long as the stops are not truly random. Roving patrols may stop vehicles for purposes of a brief inquiry, provided officers are ''aware of specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that reasonably warrant suspicion'' that an automobile contains illegal aliens; in such a case the interference with Fourth Amendment rights is ''modest'' and the law enforcement interests served are significant. 94 Fixed checkpoints provide additional safeguards; here officers may halt all vehicles briefly in order to question occupants even in the absence of any reasonable suspicion that the particular vehicle contains illegal aliens. 95

http://constitution....tation04.html#2

In short - as long as they are not search'n it's reasonable... though some of those videos looked like they were gearing up for a search.

[jon.kiparsky]

Quote

provided officers are "aware of specific articulable facts, together with rational inferences from those facts, that reasonably warrant suspicion"

As I said...

Quote

it requires a particular suspicion that the particular person is involved with a particular crime.

Quote

Fixed checkpoints provide additional safeguards; here officers may halt all vehicles briefly in order to question occupants even in the absence of any reasonable suspicion that the particular vehicle contains illegal aliens

This seems completely inconsistent with the previous standard, in addition to being morally and constitutionally repugnant. Since anything you say at that traffic stop will be taken as evidence in any future action related to it, it is testimony. Requiring someone to testify, in an official capacity, without advice of counsel, is obviously a violation of the fifth amendment.

This may be the law, but it is vile, and the people resisting it are right.

[lordofduct]

ditto on that jon.kiparsky

[farrell2k]

lordofduct, on 06 March 2013 - 02:31 PM, said:

You're saying that this is legal, so we shouldn't get up in arms about it.

Nope. I have actually said this many times now. How you could manage to completely misunderstand it is amazing to me. You guys have every right in the world to be upset about it. You have every right to not cooperate with law enforcement, and you have every right to remain silent and not answer any of their questions. What you do not have is the right to protection under the fourth amendment from extended border searches. If they have reason to believe you recently crossed the border and you seem suspicious by being a douche becoming indignant over a few simple questions, or any other reason, the fourth amendment does not protect you.

So, to recap, be upset all you want. I'll join you in disliking the extended border searches in some cases, primarily in cases where individuals who are cooperative are searched and detained based upon skin color, but what I will not do is erroneously claim that my 4th amendment rights are being violated, when I have no 4th amendment rights under that circumstance in the first place.

[lordofduct]

Wait...

I thought if we did any of that.

We were... idiots and douchebags... do I have that right?

[farrell2k]

I don't want to call anyone here a douche bag, but if you are too dumb to know your rights and act like a complete ass who is above answering a few simple questions which are 100% legal and do not even come close to fitting the definition of being "tyrannical", yes, you are a douche. everyone does have the right to be a douche, however.

[lordofduct]

I love your backhanded comments.

"I don't want to call you a douche, it's just that, you're a douche."

[Craig328]

Lots of things about getting old really suck. One of the few that doesn't is that the accumulated experience you've managed to garner by eluding Darwin this long means you can spot hopeless situations from further away and know earlier when efforts to change same will be in vain.

This is one of those situations.

It's been low level amusing observing the vastly different responses to this right enshrined by the 4th Amendment versus the shrill shrieking when it was a right enshrined in the 2nd Amendment. Tyrannical is not a state of being...it's also the ever encroaching process of getting there. But because that requires a recognition that anything that's not white isn't benign grey but rather an immature form of black, it sails on those who can only discern black and white and think the greys form a nebulous void not to get excited about until they turn completely and totally black...at which point something should be done.

So, Dylan, accept that to some, you're a douche. By douche though, they don't mean (and they're not even really aware of this which just adds a dash of jocular irony) you're really a douche...it means you're unable to reverse a matured and informed point of view on life to agree with the way they see things. You disagree, ergo, you're a douche. Couple of years ago, you'd have been "a fag". Couple years earlier still: "a doodoo head".

Bitching about answering the nice man's questions makes you a douche. Complaining about having to produce papers to prove your answers to his questions weren't lies makes you a douche (because truth is really important). Since we're on the subject of truth, complaining about having to wear that yellow star on your clothes is exceptionally douche-y...I mean, you didn't have an issue with questions or papers...what's the big deal about yellow cloth stars? Since you decided to bow to authority before, what's the point of not doing it now? Only a douche wouldn't trust his Big Brother...especially when he's doing it all for your safety and security.

However, there is good news. Now that you're a douche, you can also enjoy the early bird special at Morrisons with all the other douches.

[lordofduct]

I enjoy being a douche.

It means I spend quite a bit of time inside a ladies hoo-ha.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 07 March 2013 - 11:19 PM