Tag: Rights Dealing with Amendments Lower or Higher Than Two

More On Arizona SB 1070

As I mentioned earlier I do not like Arizona’s new law on grounds that it’s vaguely written and ignores presumption of innocence. Of course with all the screaming, pissing, and moaning over this bill I’ve been trying to figure out why the Hell it was passed in the first place.

Like most issues this one is not black and white. I admit I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the crime rates of other states unless it comes up in an anti-gun article trying to use those rates to promote their campaign of disarmament. Looking further into SB 1070 the main argument appears to deal with the fact that Arizona has a slight crime problem. First and foremost Phoenix kidnapping capital of the country.

This seems to be the main justification for the passing of the bill, crime. But of course the issue isn’t black and white even with that information. See most of the kidnappings appear to be drug and gang related. But most importantly most of the crime committed by these illegal immigrants is against… illegal immigrants:

Police in the desert city say specialized kidnap rings are snatching suspected criminals and their families from their homes, running them off the roads and even grabbing them at shopping malls in a spiraling spate of abductions.

“Phoenix is ground zero for illegal narcotics smuggling and illegal human smuggling in the United States,” said Phil Roberts, a Phoenix Police Department detective.

“There’s a lot of illegal cash out there in the valley, and a lot of people want to get their hands on it.”

Last year alone, Phoenix police reported 357 extortion-related abductions — up by nearly half from 2005 — targeting individuals with ties to Mexican smuggling rings.

So now I have the justification of the new bill. By targeting illegal immigrants specifically Arizona could stand to dramatically lower their overall crime rate. The problem is the implementation still sucks as it’s vague and gives the police the authority to target individuals without anything more than reasonable suspension.

Body Banks

I’m guessing most people reading this site don’t remember the ’80’s cyberpunk T.V. show Max Headroom. It was a great, although very short lived, show dealing with all sorts of technological issues. One thing that was prominent in the future were body banks. Body banks were where dead people were shipped to and their organs sold off for sale.

Well Uncle informs us that New York may be going that route. If Assemblyman Brodsky has his way you will become state property upon death and your organs will be dispersed.

Now I’m all for donating your organs upon death but this is outrageous. The state would be laying claim to your body making you property of the government. I’m sorry but if somebody doesn’t want to donate their organs when they die that’s their own damned business.

The Red Star Strikes Again

Well unfortunately for you, my readers, (probably more of a fortunate thing for you really) I got tied up in a side protect and didn’t get much blogging done. But I do have one post for you tonight directly from the local newspaper I like to call The Red Star. They seem to believe Minnesota needs to become a police state. This is a nice little piece I pulled from today’s story about DWIs:

Nearly 40 states allow police to set up sobriety checkpoints, often cited as one of the best tactics to keep roads safe. Minnesota started using checkpoints in 1990 but stopped four years later when the state Supreme Court ruled the tactic unconstitutional. There has been no major effort to change the law through a constitutional amendment. Police now rely largely on saturation patrols, which are less effective, to discourage drunken driving.

Minnesota also doesn’t impose enhanced penalties for extreme drunken driving unless offenders register a blood-alcohol level of 0.20 percent. Most states that impose extra penalties do so at lower levels.

Yes this state decided that assuming guilt was not constitutional. Good job! Of course The Red Star doesn’t agree and believes you need to subjugate the people of this state into proving their innocence without any evidence brought forth to accuse us of guilt.

Sobriety check points are a fancy say of saying, “We assume all people are criminals and therefore driving drunk.” You are in essence being pulled over (stopped at a check point) by police whom you must prove your innocence to before you’re allowed to drive on. That’s the definition of guilty until proven innocent. That is also one of the very ingredients for a police state.

Cripes I hate that paper.

Nothing is Black and White

So as I was browsing through my RSS reader I say a story posted on Says Uncle. Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder was tragically killed while in Iraq. As is standard protocol his body was brought back and his funeral was help. Not surprisingly Dipshit Fred Phelps and his merry band of fuckwits in the Westboro Baptist “Church” decided to throw decency to the wind and protest Lance Corporal Snyder’s funeral.

The father of Matthew Snyder sued Phelps for their actions. Well judgement has been passed down and Mr. Snyder lost and the judge decided to make him pay for Dipshit Phelps’ legal expenditures. The legal fees ended up coming to $16,510 which the family is going to have troubles paying. They’ve set up a donations page if you would like to help with the legal fee.

Of course with the title of this post you are probably expecting something else to be posted and that most certainly is the case. Needless to say by the terms and titles I’ve used in this post you know how I personally feel about the people involved. Now it’s time for me to explain what I think about this case.

As much as I despise those pricks in the Westboro Baptist “Church” I also believe they have a right to say what they’re saying. Yes it’s the unpopular route to take but the first amendment is there to protect all speech not just popular speech. As much as I hate what they’re doing they have a right to do it. I feel any lawsuit brought against an organization to prevent them for freely using their Constitutional right is wrong and the party bringing forth the suit should be made to pay for the legal fees of those they are trying to silence. From everything I’ve been able to gather I believe the purpose behind Mr. Snyder’s lawsuit was simply to silence those fuckwits claiming to be a church.

I know this is an unpopular position to take but I can not turn against my principals and beliefs. Personally I find disruption of any funeral to be distasteful. Let the friends and family of the deceased grieve in peace even if the guest of honor is your worst enemy. After all that person is dead and therefore is no longer a problem to you. But as it often happens my personal feelings collide directly with my principals. I am a man who practices what he preaches and therefore can not make an exception for something I hold to dear (the Bill of Rights) just because a I despise the person(s) using it.

Book Bannings

I didn’t know we were still banning books but apparently some schools are. As a form of retaliation a kid has taken it upon himself to loan banned books from her locker. Interesting.

As an avid reader I always strikes me as idiotic to create a list of banned books. The first thing people are going to do is obtain those books and read them hoping form something good. This goes double for books banned by any church.

REAL ID Won’t Go Away

Even though no citizen wants it out politicians are ensuring some form of REAL ID gets passed into law. This time it’s being introduced to stop the “immigration” problem. From the article:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

That’s right a card you’d be required to get in order to work. Doesn’t that just sound like big brother plus some? Of course Chuck Schumer’s name would appear on this project. What a bastard. Americans really want to beg the government for permission to work, make money, and live in this country. Also you know it’s a bad idea when:

Most European countries require citizens and foreigners to carry ID cards.

When most European countries do something you know it’s not good for individual liberty of human rights. Let’s not lie to ourselves our government is going to do everything it can to develop some federal method of tracking as many citizens as they can. But hey at least they aren’t using the terrorist card on this one.

California Strikes Again

Although many people think of California as being entirely beach front property the truth is much of it is desert. Southern California for instance has very little rainfall and depends on irrigation by water drawn from Northern California. Realizing this Angelina and Quan Ha decided it was stupid having all that grass in their lawn and decided to replace it with wood chips and drought tolerant plants. What happened next is rather obvious:

Meanwhile, the couple said they had reduced their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009.

Oh and they’re being sued by their city. Apparently the city of Orange decided it would be a good idea to have an ordinance requiring 40% of a piece of property to be covered in live plants. They did this because, you know, they like things that make sense.

Seriously the problems of that state are never ending.

Senate Traitors Extend PATROIT Act

Yeah it’s official. OK it was official before but now it’s REALLY official. The senate is made up by a bunch of traitors. The senate today voted to extend the expiring provisions of the civil liberties violation known as the PATRIOT Act. This pisses me right the fuck off.

I’m very open about saying everybody who voted in favor of the original PATRIOT Act should have been brought up on charges of treason and dealt with accordingly. The law shits all over civil liberties in this country and undoes the Bill of Rights in its entirety. But here is the icing on the cake:

With the law facing a sunset date of Feb. 28, the Senate opted to vote for the extension of three crucial provisions of the act rather than opening debate on a revised bipartisan plan passed by the Judiciary Committee in October that would have imposed stricter privacy safeguards.

That’s right they didn’t even open debates on this. Nope they just passed and said fuck the American people.

To top that all of the current administration is still blaming Bush for everything. If they want to keep playing that card maybe they should show how they’re different and repeal of the of the God damned shit that got passed under his administration.

Bastards.

Creation of a Police State Through Zero Tolerance

Pop quiz time everybody. What do you do when a 12 year-old girl draws some doodles on a desk?

a. Make her clean the graffiti off of the desk.
b. Give her detention after school.
c. Call the police and have her arrested.

If you answer ‘c’ to the above question you are qualified to be the principal at the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York. That’s right a 12 year-old girl wrote, “I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)” on her desk with a marker. Shortly after the police were called and the girl was handcuffed and arrested.

This is another grand example of how zero tolerance policies work. You establish that there will be no tolerance for graffiti and if somebody doodles on a desk you call the police. Time and time again we are reminded that laws enforced without consideration of context does nothing more than create a police state where people expect to be arrested the second they do something that isn’t approved.

For an example outside of schools let’s say there is a zero tolerance policy put into place that states killing another human being is illegal. Of course this sounds OK on paper under you realize since no consideration is made for the event somebody who was legally defending themselves would be charged for murder. The linked story has a list of other abuses of zero tolerance as well as police involvement in things that should be handled by school administrators.

More On Big Brother

A few days ago I posted a story about a school district that got caught remotely activating built in web cams on laptops provided to students. Well some more information has come out. Apparently the school did activate the web cameras remotely 42 times. Of course they claim it was only to track stolen or lost laptops but I’m pretty sure those weren’t the only reasons considering how this case cam about. Now the fun part:

Either way, it looks like this is going beyond a civil case of the families suing the school district. The FBI is now investigating the case as well, to see if the district violated either wiretapping or computer-intrusion laws.

Now the FBI is involved. Yeah I hope this school district gets nailed to the wall over this. I’d love to see some people getting arrested or at least fired due to this whole fiasco.