It must be depressing to be a Republican these days. When I was a sprout people said Barry Goldwater was crazy, but he looks like Thomas fuckin’ Jefferson next to the asshats, fucktards, pinheads, fleawits and tools fronting the Grand Old Party these days.
All you have to do is pop round to Steve Benen’s Political Animal — be sure to eat breakfast first, or you’ll lose your appetite — to get the 411 on the Fool Factor:
• Paul Ryan can’t count to 10 without taking his shoes off.
• Newt Gingrich will need a separate campaign bus just to carry all the positions he’s taken (four in the past two weeks) on Ryan’s budget “plan.”
• Mitt Romney acknowledges that there’s “a lot of waste” in the defense budget, but says he wouldn’t trim it by a single, solitary rusty steel penny.
• Michele Bachmann, self-professed fiscal conservative, never met a piece of pork on the hoof that she didn’t smooch right on its flabby porcine lips.
Christ, no wonder Huckabee and Trump ran like roaches from the 2012 presidential clusterfuck. The Repugs would be better off running a sack of hammers against Obama. A sack of hammers may be as dumb as — well, as a sack of hammers — but at least you can trust a hammer, in the hands of an experienced operator, to do what it was designed to do. Not so the other tools in the GOP belt.
• Late update: Speaking of fascism, this story about the Supremes giving cops more leeway to kick down your door without (a) probable cause and (2) a warrant isn’t getting much play. I suppose this means that should the SWAT team get the address wrong, overhear you watching a cowboy movie, conclude that gunfire is being exchanged inside, kick down the door and shoot you nine or 10 times, that you will be ineligible for compensation in addition to being severely dead. Only Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented. Good for her. And shame on the rest of you black-robed pussies. Kevin Drum also weighs in on the issue.
Mad Blog Media 
8-1 really surprised me on that decision. JFC.
I will only offer a response to the SCOTUS’ clusterfuck decision by asking: Miranda Rights are read each time a person is detained by the police; yes or no?
It will be interesting to see which scummy lawyer tries to weasel his/her/its way out of the nuances of this decision. “Your Honor, while my client was smoking 50 joints of his/her/its own personal use, I wager that by toking it up so heavily he/she/it was, in fact, not destroying the evidence but smoking it to share it with the nice police officers.”
In case no one wants to wikipedia the first question, the answer is “Nope!” Since the Miranda Rights are read to warn a suspect of their rights against self-incrimination, if you are not being detained for a possible crime involving self-incrimination (say drunk in public), you will not be read your Miranda Rights. There is no argument there….which could be the same as this new ruling. There is no argument there as long as the narrow definition of the decision is followed; reasonable suspicion that evidence is being actively destroyed. The burden of proof will rest with the DA’s office….which is where it belongs.
I wish I had as much confidence in the police and D.A. taking the straight and narrow as you do, James. Next time I am taking a Constitutional and flush the john, I hope I don’t have to worry about the door being bashed down.
“We thought he was destroying evidence, Your Honor. But it wasn’t good shit, just normal shit. Sorry for the 40 cal slug through the victim’s skull, too. We thought he was reaching down for a weapon, but he was just trying to pull up his pants.”
Constitution is there for a reason. And the War on Drugs is just an excuse to strip said document of its protections. I don’t understand this damn war on drugs. Its fine and legal for me to polish off a large amount of Jack Daniels in my living room (well not fine for my liver). But one joint and I have to worry about being busted and lose my job. There is LITTLE logic to our drug laws that I understand. Your milage may vary, I suppose.
Thankfully, I gave up chemical illicitude when I started riding lots, as hard as that was for some skeptics to understand. I don’t worry about being guilty, but I do worry about police and prosecutorial overreach and the continual erosion of original intent.
I’m with Khal on this one, having covered the cops briefly in my youth and watched the erosion of our civil liberties over the course of a few decades in the name of the War On Commies, the War on Hippies and Peace Creeps, the War On Drugs and the War On Terror.
Identify yourself as a police officer? In some jurisdictions this means “Yell halt three times fast and shoot to kill.” Google up “Denver police” sometime for an appalling look at the excesses made possible by lax oversight and a very loose constitutional leash.
Ever wonder how so many traffic stops for minor infractions — broken taillight, failure to signal a turn, Driving While Brown/Black — lead to major drug confiscation and arrests? Yeah, me too, wink wink, nudge nudge. And let’s not forget the traditional inflation of the value of the amount seized — when I was a young up-and-comer it was traditional for the cops to estimate “street value” based on single-joint sales, which mostly were non-existent. Thus a $100 pound of ditch weed would rival the Hope Diamond.
So, yeah. “They” say the innocent have nothing to fear. I say, “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.”
All the more reason I carry that ACLU membership card around.
From the Times:
Justice Ginsburg then asked a rhetorical question based on the text of the Fourth Amendment.
“How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and, on hearing sounds indicative of things moving, forcibly enter and search for evidence of unlawful activity?” she asked.
Most minor traffic infractions tend to result in big busts because criminals tend to not be very smart. That and with probable cause established a police officer doesn’t need anything else. Sadly that has been true for a long while so this new decision is just tacked onto that erosion of “freedom and liberty.”
My MJ smoking neighbor was recently pulled over for driving with expired tags. He was asked out of his car, given a field sobriety test (which he claims to have passed) and spent three hours in jail. When his day in court came up yesterday, the judge asked to continue his case because the DA was not able to establish what his ultimate infraction was – besides driving with expired tags. Said neighbor was sure he had a case because when he was arrested the police officer failed to “read me my Miranda Rights” and “put me in jail.”
Now since the officer had probable cause – expired tags – he probably acted on a hunch which was that said MJ smoking neighbor was either drunk or hopped up on something due to his nervous twitching. So the officer – presumably for his own safety – detains my neighbor based upon those facts. He was not arrested. He was given his day in court. And he is free to drive around with his expired tags.
Essentially this is a combination of paranoid person (my neighbor) and what some would call “good police work” (the officer) in ‘taking a bite outta crime.’ Granted I am failing to see how this is a failure in the system since no one has been maltreated. My neighbor is free to smoke his weed at home as much as he wants, drive from point A to B and participate in society. He is not behind bars, working in a chain gang, grabbing soap in the jail or incarcerated in any way. He was “busted” for breaking the law. That is what the cops are supposed to do, right?
My point is that if we have a problem with the laws, then we should change them. If we want criminals to have free reign over the rest of society, then I guess allowing them to destroy evidence is a good thing. If we allow the cops, lawyers, judges and politicians to set this bar for us without holding their asses to the fire then the battle has already been lost. Freedom is precious but when one is not willing to accept that it is shared, then we all lose.
“asshats, fucktards, pinheads, fleawits and tools ” — Patrick, you are a fucking briliant comic writer. The rhythm is perfect — four iambs followed by a monosyllable to punch it in. I am in awe.
Not to mention that the current GOP has richly earned this stream of obscene invective. Richly.
The article itself paints an interesting picture. In this case, the police were pursuing a suspect but had no idea where he had gone in an apartment complex. Smelling MJ in a residence, they decided to raid the house without a warrant, hearing noises sounding like evidence was being destroyed. I go back to my earlier comment. Don’t ever take a dump if one of your housemates is toking up. You may be facing a gun barrel while your pants are around your ankles.
The idea that we allow such conduct or conversely, face criminals having free reign over society is quite a logical stretch and I would suggest is a false dichotomy. The Republic has survived over 200 years with 4th Amendment restrictions on police powers relatively intact and has not failed. Comparing this to a traffic stop, which is done in plain sight based on actions going on in plain sight (previous SCOTUS rulings) doesn’t make sense to me. Letting cops chase bad guys into a project and then allowing them to smash their way into any house without a warrant is more likely to lead to the erosion of the Republic as we know it than missing out on a few pot smokers. Or, to gun battles that could be avoided.
If the cops thought they had a major dealer at hand rather than some users, they could have staked out the place quietly and gotten a warrant. Playing Dirty Harry may work on TV, but I would restrict it in real life to extreme circumstances. Dopers don’t make the cut in my book.
So its not just about changing dope laws. Its about upholding the Bill of Rights regardless of what alleged crime is being done. The Supremes actually made a narrow ruling, but I think this one was questionable. Its one thing to smash the door down if someone is screaming or in exigent circumstances that have to be defended on the assumption that evidence will be excluded. Its quite another to raid a house without a warrant based on the smell of a joint or smell of a commie, etc. and have the assumption be the search is legal ( As O’Grady mentioned, its not just the war on drugs. Its the war on terror, the war on communists, the war on peace and civil rights activists, etc. ) Every time we blunder into these overreaches of police power due to fears of bogey men, we end up regretting it. Well, some of us do.
Stephen Colbert has been skewering Newt. If he ends up in the top 3 in Iowa, his opponents will just roll out the tapes instead of filming a new commercial.
How do guys who have never actually done anything get so cocky?