The American Guesser

This is amazing:

The lawsuit that George William Roberts filed Thursday stems from a May 11 incident in which Roberts was charged with public intoxication. The charge was later dismissed in General District Court.

Melvin Williams, who is representing Roberts, said court testimony indicated that police were answering a call about someone disturbing the peace. After speaking to neighbors, they went to Roberts’ door in the 800 block of Peck Street [in Roakoke, VA].

According to the lawsuit, Roberts’ girlfriend answered and when asked if anyone else was home, she told them Roberts was getting dressed in a back room. As she spoke, Roberts walked into the living room where he could be seen from the door.

Officers pushed into the house, seized Roberts, dragged him outside and charged him with being drunk in public, the lawsuit says.

Naturally, he’s suing for $10 million, saying that police trespassed, committed assault and battery, and both the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure and Virginia law by entering his home without a warrant.

Hey, I mean it’s not like they held him down and forced him to drink before they violated his privacy, committed assault and dragged him outside where they could claim he was drunk and in public.

Good luck with the lawsuit.

One of the worst evils being perpetrated by Bush apologists has been to spread the idea that anyone who disagrees with or disapproves of anything coming out of the White House is somehow disloyal or reckless. Brad Spangler says:

An example of one of those brainwashing tricks is the continuous debate over what the right “balance� is between liberty and security. The implicit assumption underlying that debate is that liberty and security are antagonistic; that one supposedly can not have more of one without having less of the other.

With all respect to Mr. Spangler, Ben Franklin said it best:

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.”

As a libertarian who only grudgingly supported the war in Iraq — I couldn’t bring myself to disagree with the idea of liberating so many enslaved people, and Sadaam never lived up to treaties — I have sat back and watched dissenters’ patriotism questioned by Bush’ surrogates. I could never agree with the torture and mistreatment, nor with the continued erosion of civil liberties.

The massive spying program in violation of FISA was the final straw for me. But I was surprised at the anger I saw from people who thought that because I supported the war I must be a die-hard Bush supporter. I laughed that off.

But the worst of the criticism was that I was somehow advocating a weakening of our national security. By insisting that the Bush administration needed to get a judge’s permission before they tapped a citizen’s phone line, I was in their opinion somehow expressing my lack of concern about terrorism. One person accused me or forgetting about Sept. 11, 2001.

To hell with that. I voted for the guy in 2004. I didn’t drink his Kool Aid.

Eugene Volokh foresees civil libery issues with the Feds doing radiation testing around mosques, but Tom Knapp, Libertarian-Democratic Commentator for the Free-Market News Network says he isn’t letting it weigh heavilly on his mind:

Monitoring for radiation on “public” property — including said property near mosques, Islamic centers, the homes of Islamic activists, etc. — reveals nothing about those places or the people who own or frequent them except whether or not radioactive materials are present in the locale. It doesn’t tell the FBI which imam is screwing around on his wife or which congregation member sneaks a ham sandwich in for lunch once a week, or even which — if any — people in the area might be affiliated with al Qaeda, sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, or anything else.

I reject out of hand the argument that this is a non-issue only on the basis of “well, of they have nothing to hide …”

I don’t want to be reduced to radioactive dust, and I know there are Islamic terrorists who want very much to do this. But, I don’t want to give the Feds the ability to sit across my house and scan my house just out of curiosity, either. So I guess I qualify as “disturbed” about this development.

I want safeguards. I want warrants.

Wisdom like this 2002 article in slate is why I link to Eugene Volokh’s Volokh Conspiracy. Like most people, I’m glad that there’s technology that lets the Feds detect nuclear weapons — including dirty bombs — without having to rely exclusively on human intelligence and electronic eavesdropping.

I suspect that courts will find some way to allow searches for dirty bombs. If we distinguish these searches from normal law enforcement, then the tolerance for extra government power might be limited to these extraordinary cases. But if searches for radioactive material and searches for marijuana must be treated equally, then both kinds of searches will probably become equally permissible.

Turns out the Feds have been scanning mosques for radiation levels, and have been doing so without a warrants. Eugene Volokh says that legally, it’s no different than turning an infrared camera on a private home to detect the lamps sometimes used to grow marijuana indoors. Realistically, there’s a huge different between growing weed and building a dirty bomb. But Constitutional protections must apply the same to serious crimes and not so serious crimes, he says. He makes the arguments for creating different kinds of searches, the results of which can be used only for specific purposes.

Our current president has shown himself far too willing to violate the Constitution. And eventually, prosecutors would apply any weakened rules to crimes other than terrorism. Our Attorney General has written opinions that say it’s acceptable to torture prisoners. None of this gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

It makes me wonder whether the Bushites are really looking for nukes, or are casting about for a court challenge. If the courts balk at challenging these radiation-based searches for nukes, then they can’t balk at using infrared cameras on your home and my home.

The lady or the tiger, anyone?

It’s not an easy choice, at least not for people who value their freedom as much as their safety.