Tag: 4th amendment

Ron Paul feted in raucous farewell rally

Ron Paul On Warrantless Surveillance

A recent column by former Congressman Ron Paul called for an end to warrantless mass surveillance and a return of the 4th Amendment to American life.

As Paul pointed out, there is no terrorist exception in the 4th Amendment. Either probable cause exists to surveil someone, in which case warrantless surveillance wouldn’t be needed, or it does not.

We couldn’t agree more. Terrorism is no excuse to suspend the Constitution just as the alleged, but basically fictional, “Red Menace” was no excuse 100 years ago.

Myrtle Beach City Council Mental Breakdown

Myrtle Beach City Council passed first reading of an ordinance Tuesday aimed at controlling Atlantic Beach Bikefest crowds.

The ordinance can only be described as the result of an apparent collective mental breakdown on the part of Myrtle Beach city officials.

Supposedly for use during “extraordinary events”, the ordinance specifically names Memorial Day weekend as an extraordinary event, thereby establishing de facto martial law in Myrtle Beach for that weekend.

Among other things, the ordinance allows the city manager to close private businesses, require private property owners to employ private security, close public streets and makes the possession of a number of objects, some as innocuous as backpacks, coolers, bottles and pets, violations subject to arrest.

Obamas-1984

Liberty, Mother’s Milk and the Poison Pill [Poll]

We found out over the past week that the constitutionally guaranteed privacy, civil liberties and freedoms of U.S. citizens have been effectively assigned to the scrap heap by our own government.

Okay. For nearly 100 years, the U.S. government has sought to spy on American citizens through a variety of programs, most of which can be tied to the Department of Justice and FBI reign ever since J. Edgar Hoover got the nod from Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to establish the DOJ’s Intelligence Division in 1919.

It took Hoover less than a year to collect files on over 150,000 American citizens who, through his perverted sense of propriety, were considered a threat to the U.S. government. Those files were amassed in the days when typewriters were the most modern piece of equipment in government offices, a telephone in a private house was still somewhat of a novelty and the Model T Ford was only 10 years old.

But, Hoover demonstrated how quickly a small government department, with the help of private citizens spying and informing on each other, could invade the lives of American citizens.