The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must obtain a search warrant before using a GPS device to track criminal suspects. But the justices left for another day larger questions about how technology has altered a person’s expectation of privacy.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the government needed a valid warrant before attaching a GPS device to the Jeep used by D.C. drug kingpin Antoine Jones, who was convicted in part because police tracked his movements on public roads for 28 days.

“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search’ ” under the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, Scalia wrote.

[…]

Alito’s point was that it was the lengthy GPS surveillance of Jones itself that violated the Fourth Amendment and that “the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.”

“For such offenses,” he wrote, “society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not — and indeed, in the main, simply could not — secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.”

The only disagreement among the Justices was whether or not the decision went far enough to protect individuals in a 21st century world based on a 18th century law (i.e. the Fourth Amendment).

Hey, even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in awhile and in even rarer cases, 9 Supreme Court Justices.

***Correction/Further Analysis***
If you followed the link to The Washington Post article, you might notice that the parts I quoted don’t match up exactly. This is because the article has since been edited with a more complete explanation of what United States v. Jones really means. It appears that I put entirely too much trust into what was being reported in the media here and elsewhere (and I still haven’t gotten around to reading the opinion for myself).

Doug Mataconis (who is a lawyer; I am not) was the first to point out that the coverage of this ruling isn’t quite as good from a civil liberties perspective as the media would have us believe:

I think all you can really say is that, under circumstances of this case, the Court found that the use of the tracking device without a warrant was impermissible. As the majority opinion notes, however, the Government attempted to raise in their arguments to the Supreme Court the theory that the search was supported by reasonable suspicion and/or probable cause to believe that Jones was the leader of a drug gang. Under such a theory, the use of the tracking device would have theoretically been justified even without a warrant.

You can read a more detailed analysis from Doug here Outside the Beltway.

Doug also pointed me to this article by Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy post entitled “What Jones Does Not Hold”

It seems that I wasn’t the only one mislead about the true impact of this ruling. Even Radley Balko at The Agitator had to make some corrections to his post regarding this case and made reference to the same post by Kerr as well as an even more discouraging analysis from Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog.

In case you by some miracle hadn’t noticed it yet, tens of thousands of web sites around the country and around the world, are “going black” or putting up banners explaining that they are not available or there is no content today etc… In protest against the “Stop Online Privacy Act” and the “ProtectIP act”, which are currently (or were recently), being promulgated in congress.

We don’t have a problem with anyone who does. It’s important that people understand what SOPA and PIPA are (or were), and most folks are sadly unaware of the kind of stupid and harmful things that our government does.

Google and Wikipedia are two of the most important and most used sites on the net; and by participating in this protest, they will very certainly make a lot more people aware of this issue.

But “going black” isn’t what we do here.

We talk about political and social issues here; in particular about liberty and freedom. We try to inform people about the important issues, events, and principles of liberty and freedom; and then talk about them in as free and open a way as we can.

I personally think that going black would be entirely against what we are about here; and while it might help to draw more attention to the problem, it wouldn’t help us inform you, or help us begin the conversation about the issue.

… and of course, you can’t go to wikipedia day to find out about it…

So, I personally, would like to do something that is in the spirit of protesting the idiotic and harmful nature of these pieces of industry lobbying masquerading as legislation…

…And share a few things:

That’s the best explanation of why the freedom to share (within fair use of course, copyrights ARE important) is important; and why legislation like PIPA and SOPA are not only stupid and harmful, but entirely antithetical to the American system of ordered liberty.

And then there’s this piece by my friend (and bestselling author, buy his excellent books please) Larry Correia:

“for all of the people out there on the internet having a massive freak out about the government potentially damaging something they love… WELCOME TO THE PARTY.

You think this is something new or unusual? Nope. This is just about a topic that you happen to be familiar with. If you fall into that camp, I want you to take a deep breath, step back, and examine all of the other issues in the past that you didn’t know jack squat about, but your knee jerk reaction was to say “there’s a problem, the governement has to do something!” Well guess what? The crap the federal government usually comes up with to fix these problems is similar to SOPA. In other words, the legislation addresses a perceived problem by instituting a bunch of stupid overregulation and taking away someone’s freedom.

You think people need access to affordable medical care and shouldn’t be denied coverage? Well, you got used and we got the bloated ridiculous mess that is Obamacare. You saw a news report about how big business defrauded people and said congress should do something? Well, everyone in the business world got screwed because of Enron by completely useless new arbitrary crap laws, and a few years later we got into an even bigger financial crisis which the arbitrary crap laws we spent billions conforming to did nothing to prevent. No, because that financial crisis was caused by people saying that there was this huge problem that needed to be fixed, so more people who couldn’t afford to pay mortgages could still buy houses, and the government simply had to do something to fix this problem!

Any crisis… Any problem… You ask the feds to fix it, you get this kind of answer. Almost never do the laws fix the actual problem. Instead the government gets bigger and gains a few more powers and it doesn’t fix the issue. When the problem gets bigger, then the government gets bigger and gains a few more powers that actually make the problem worse. Oh look! Despite all of these laws the problem has gotten even bigger? Whatever should we do? Why, I know! Let’s pass an even bigger law that takes away more individual freedom and gives the government more control!
Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Any topic, any situation, any problem.

They address it, you lose freedom and they gain more control. Some of you are only offended today because this particular law hurts something you enjoy. The rest of the time? Screw it. You can’t be bothered to pay attention. Or worse, people like me who are up in arms over an issue are just cranks or anti-government crackpots.”

I was going to write something roughly similar to this, but Larry beat me to it… and I’d rather share what he wrote, because it’s good, and because I can.

At least for now…

Yes I would have [signed the NDAA] and I do believe it’s appropriate to have the capacity to detain people who are threats to this country who are members of Al Qaeda. Look you have every right in this country to protest and to express your views on a wide range of issues but you don’t have a right to join a group that is challenged America and has threatened killing Americans, has killed Americans and has declared war against America. That’s treason. And in this country we have a right to take those people and put them in jail.

And I recognize in a setting where there are enemy combatants and some of them on our own soil that could possibly be abused. There are a lot of things that I think this president does wrong – lots of them. But I don’t think he’s going to abuse this power and I know that if I were president I would not abuse this power. And I could also tell you in my view, you have to choose people who have sufficient character not to abuse the power of the presidency and to make sure that we do not violate the Constitutional principles.

But let me tell you, people who join Al Qaeda are not entitled to the rights of due process under our normal legal code. They are entitled instead to be treated as enemy combatants.

There are so many problems with Gov. Romney’s answer but let’s start with the issue of treason. The Constitution actually deals with the issue of treason (one of the few crimes mentioned in the document) in Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Where in this section does it say anything about jailing alleged traitors without due process? From my reading of this, the bar for proving treason is quite high but at a very minimum requires a trial (as opposed to the president’s declaration someone is a traitor or “enemy combatant”).

Perhaps the bigger issue is Romney’s throwing out any notion of the rule of law and replacing it with the rule of men. We are supposed to trust the president, even the very president who he says has done “lots of things” wrong. The onus is on us to make sure the “right” person is elected so that this power isn’t ever abused and does not violate Constitutional principles rather than constrain him with the rule of law (i.e. the Constitution).

I’ve got some bad news for you Gov. Romney. I don’t believe you have “sufficient character not to abuse the power of the presidency.” Your very acknowledgement that you would have signed the NDAA proves that you cannot be trusted to defend the Constitution as your oath would require.

Related:
National Defense Authorization Act Passes Complete With Indefinite Detention Provisions
The Late David Nolan’s Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Fears One Step Closer to Being Realized

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

America has come a long way since King delivered this speech. Racial and ethnic minorities have made great strides thanks to courageous individuals like King who made a stand for liberty and justice (and in King’s case, paid with his life) and we are all better off for it.

Here is the rest of the speech. Listen and be inspired.

It occurs to me that this raises a potential problem for two of the current crop of Republican candidates. Neither Huntsman nor Romney supports same-sex marriage. Both are Mormons. Surely at some point some curious voter will ask one or the other for his view of polygamy. Given that they are trying to get votes from people who regard polygamy as so obviously wicked that the mere possibility of legalizing it is a convincing argument against legalizing same-sex marriage, what are they to say?

It is true that the Church of Latter-Day Saints abandoned polygamy a century or so back. But it is also true that it was founded by polygamists, throughout its early history regarded polygamy as an important part of its religion, and abandoned it only under severe outside pressure, including military occupation by the U.S. army. Can a believing Mormon really hold that polygamy is not merely a bad idea at the moment but inherently evil? Can someone unwilling to say he believes that polygamy is evil win the Republican nomination?

I can see his point… But by changing a few words, you can make a completely different point:

It is true that the United States abandoned slavery a century and a half back. But it is also true that it was founded by slaveowners, throughout its early history regarded slavery as an important part of its national economy, and abandoned it only through the bloodiest war in the nation’s history, a war fought between the states for the very continuance of the union. Can someone calling themselves a “Classical Liberal” and claiming to represent the views of the Founding Fathers really hold that slavery is not merely a bad idea at the moment but inherently evil? Can someone unwilling to say he believes that slavery is evil win the Republican nomination?

Logically, I think we’re at the same place here (although, again, I consider slavery to be inherently evil but don’t consider polygamy/polyandry to be inherently evil — as long as only occurs with full consent of all parties).

As someone who would call myself a classical liberal, or libertarian, I don’t think there’s any particular difficulty maintaining that slavery is evil while still revering the work that the Founding Fathers did to create America. Slavery is an unfortunate blight on our history. It is an affront to the values affirmed in the Declaration of Independence. Slavery was a failure of the time, and while we can’t erase it from the record, classical liberals point to the outstanding positive contributions that the Founding Fathers made implementing the ideas of Constitutionally-limited government and the rule of law in solid practice. And the very nature of the system they put into place allowed for some of their mistakes such as slavery to be rectified by the 13th Amendment (sadly, it required a war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men in addition).

If we wanted to break it down, there are hundreds of things we could force politicians to answer for if we took the worst of their social associations and forced them to answer for it. We don’t ask Catholic candidates whether the history of the Crusades means they’ll engage in wars of religious oppression. We don’t ask Gingrich, a Southerner, whether he plans to re-institute Jim Crow. And we accept that classical liberals can be anti-slavery without hypocrisy. If anything, the problems that Mitt Romney may face is the fact that he follows a minority religion of relatively recent origin, so the folks who believe in long-established fairy tales are already prejudiced against him with distrust. So he may face the question that Friedman brings up, but such questions — contrary to David Friedman’s implication — are unfair.

Politicians have enough problems that we don’t need to invent “gotchas” like these to ensnare them. It may be valid to ask him whether he supported the efforts of his church to spend as much money as it did on the California Prop 8 ballot measure, as it is at least current, but bringing up long-disavowed sins committed by Mormons three generations ago is completely unnecessary.

A stand-up comedian I heard once said that prejudice is simply a sign of laziness, because if you take the time to get to know someone, they’ll give you hundreds of individual reasons to hate them. The same is true of politicians; they all stink, but each has their own distinctly distasteful odor to find offensive.

I suspect that most people would say Rick Santorum and for good reason. To Santorum, the decline of the traditional, nuclear family is the root cause for every problem facing America right now. Even (perhaps especially) individual rights take a back seat to his family values.

While I obviously disagree with this view, I don’t think there is any question that children have a better chance of becoming productive, successful adults when they grow up in a healthy and loving family environment than those who do not. Whether such an environment requires both a father and mother is subject to debate (and maybe a topic for another time).

With the premise that Rick Santorum is the great defender of the family in mind, a member of Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) asked the former senator a very good question as he was wading through the crowd shaking hands:

“As a champion of family values and keeping America strong, would you continue to destroy families by sending nonviolent drug offenders to prison?”

To which Santorum responds:

“Uh…wow…the federal government doesn’t do that.”

Jacob Sullum’s response is right on:

“That will come as a surprise to the nearly 100,000 drug offenders in federal prison, who account for almost half of all inmates. (Another 400,000 or so are in state prisons and local jails.) Does Santorum think only violent drug offenders go to federal prison? There is no such requirement.”

Perhaps Santorum should take a moment to visit someone from Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) and find out if tougher federal drug laws are destroying families.

This is a perfect opening for the Ron Paul campaign to point this out to his rival who is obviously clueless on this issue. Between Rick Santorum’s continued support for the war on (some) drugs and his eagerness to start up a war* with Iran we cannot afford, I think it’s time to question his pro-family bona fides.

Related: Reforming America’s Prison System: The Time Has Come

*I realize that war is sometimes a necessary evil, but necessary or not, war is very tough on families. We should be very reluctant to go to war for this reason among others.

To take the Internet as proof that the government is a necessary producer of research and innovation, you have to reject the scientific method. Unfortunately, there are rarely controls in public policy. We can’t find out what would have happened if government policy had taken a different course, so we don’t know anything more about who should fund research from the fact that government-funded research has produced good things in the past.

But what would have happened if U.S. public policy had taken a different course? I’ve thought about the impossible-to-answer question of where we would have been without DARPA and other government influences on telecom. What most people don’t consider, I believe, is the restraining influence the government-granted AT&T monopoly had on telecommunications for most of the 20th century. AT&T developed a “Teletypewriter Exchange” system in 1931, for example, but had no need to develop it, there being little or no competitive pressure to do so. (Its patent on attaching devices to phone wires undoubtedly helped as well, preventing anyone using AT&T’s wires for modem service.)

Had there been competition, I suspect that someone would have come up with the idea of packet-switched networks—that’s what the Internet is—before Leonard Kleinrock did in 1962. Kleinrock was a student at MIT—he wasn’t at DARPA, which didn’t get into packet-switching until about 1966. (Then again, MIT was almost certainly awash in government money—specifically military money—so there you go. Maybe we owe all the good things we’ve got to war, but I doubt it.)

So back when AT&T was a monopoly, they developed technology that preceded the internet for delivering data over phone lines, as well as owning (and enforcing) a patent on attaching devices to phone wires, which undoubtedly allowed them to prevent anyone else from capitalizing on data-over-phone-line ideas.

Some would say that this is evidence that government should have been financing this sort of invention so that it would be in the public domain (as TCP/IP eventually was). But there’s another angle to look at here:

Why doesn’t the government buy patents that are valuable but underutilized, and release them to the public domain?

Think of it this way: if the US Patent Office had purchased AT&T’s patents back in the 1930′s and released them into the public domain, they could have been capitalized by a broad swath of companies and perhaps kickstarted development of the internet far before DARPA ever got a hand in it (of course mainstream personal commercial user acceptance probably would have relied on availability a low-cost PC’s just as we saw beginning in the late 90′s). AT&T’s monopoly over phone service gave them no profit incentive to utilize their own invention, but getting it into the public domain could have created a competitive market where none existed before.

I see a couple of potential advantages to this idea over that of government research:

1. Less of a politicized “government picking winners and losers” model for government research. Instead of independent researchers seeking government grant money for things that have not been invented (and for which commercial development is outside their reach as pure scientists), they might need to seek private funding from investors who expect to reap benefits from selling those patents to the USG.
2. Give an extra incentive for US companies to continue R&D investment in more “speculative” technologies. For technologies which may be valuable but for which the commercial viability is a more long-term play, or for technologies which might be valuable but prove not to be relevant to the business model of the company in question, they can still earn some return on that sunk R&D investment.
3. Development of an individual technology-creation boom. Many individuals with good ideas who *could* patent their idea but have no desire or capability to create a company to monetize their idea forego the patent process because there is no return on their time. All of these ideas are lost to the world, at least for a time.
4. Perhaps most importantly, this is the government paying for results rather than promises. As I suggested in this December 2006 post, I believe that incentivizing the private sector to invent might be a more efficient model in general than in purchasing research on the front end.

Now, there are undoubtedly issues with this proposal.

First and foremost, the fear would be that companies would merely use this as a vehicle to offload shitty patents onto the government — just another form of corporate welfare. And I do suspect they’d try. My answer to that is twofold. One, of all the departments of government, I think the Patent & Trademark Office is widely regarded as one of the less politicized. If procedures are put into place to present them with these patents “blindly”, i.e. so that they cannot know the identity of the inventor, I would suspect that we can at least get their fair assessment of an inventions value in an objective manner. Second, is that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. For a company that is not capitalizing on a patent, they understandably think it’s worthless — that doesn’t mean that it’s so. There might be some legitimate diamonds in the rough here.

Second, the fear would be that this would merely be government picking winners and losers on a different stage. I.e. if businesses can’t reap value from their patents, and if government boards can’t reliably pick which research programs are of most benefit, how can they do so with patents? This is a pretty typical government problem. Again, I think putting this in the hands of the PTO might help, but efficiency and waste is always a concern.

Third, the fear is that companies simply won’t sell. Patents — even useless ones — are important legal tools. When Novell sold off a patent portfolio in late 2010, the value worked out to be roughly $510K per patent. When Google announced an intended deal to acquire Motorola Mobility last year, the value of the purchase conveniently was set at $12.5B — equal to Motorola’s 24,500 patents multiplied by $510K. When Nortel went bankrupt and auctioned off their patent portfolio last summer, the total value of their 6,000 patents averaged $750K apiece. There may be some positive value in owning some of those patents, but there’s incredible potential negative value in NOT owning enough patents to countersue your competitors if they decided to engage in an IP war. For big companies, a robust patent portfolio is the international diplomacy equivalent of a nation having nuclear capability — those without it won’t mess with you, and you make sure you play nicely with others who have it to avoid MAD. The key to this is not that there might be unused patents of inestimable value to the public that the companies aren’t even using, but rather that they may not be willing to sell *any* part of their IP portfolio. Unilateral disarmament has never been a popular strategy.

All that said, one of the questions we might be left with is simple: is it a better situation than we have now? Would the advantages gained be enough to justify a wholesale switch from our current strategy of paying for research, or perhaps even of diverting a portion of that budget to a program like this instead? I think it would — opening up the option to reward inventors (whether corporate or individual) for creating IP and then opening it up to the public domain seems like a great strategy for a continual boost to near-term growth. Pure scientific research has its place as a public good. Yet I think a case can be made that less “pure” inventions, being opened to the public domain, have a potential place at the table too, if not instead of, pure science.

But since Santorum is polling in the top three in Iowa, I think it’s time use his own words to illustrate why he is the most anti-liberty candidate in the race. He actually makes Barack Obama look like a civil libertarian (which is quite an accomplishment).

First, in this interview, Santorum says (among other things) that the pursuit of happiness somehow harms America.

Then, David Boaz writing for Cato@Liberty shares this quote from Santorum taken from a 2006 interview on NPR:

One of the criticisms I make is to what I refer to as more of a libertarianish right. You know, the left has gone so far left and the right in some respects has gone so far right that they touch each other. They come around in the circle. This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone. That there is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.

Silly me. I thought the American Revolution and this grand experiment in republican constitutional governance was precisely about “radical individualism” and liberty. To the extent our society hasn’t succeeded is due in large part to moralistic busy bodies just like Rick Santorum.

As if meddling in the affairs of Americans were not enough, Santorum also wants to continue to meddle in the Middle East and elsewhere. Santorum told “Meet the Press” that he would bomb Iran via airstrikes if Iran failed to allow inspectors verify that the regime isn’t developing a nuclear weapon (essentially, Iran is guilty of developing a bomb until proven innocent). “Iran will not get a nuclear weapon under my watch” Santorum proclaimed.

It seems that Rick Santorum inhabits another planet from those of us who believe in liberty, small government, and a humble foreign policy. This might explain why in the debates Santorum has the look of bewilderment on his face when Ron Paul speaks (in a foreign language apparently) about common sense principles of life, liberty, and property.

If the idea of a President Santorum doesn’t frighten you, it should.

I can think of no finer eulogy than the one given by Radley Balko on The Agitator:

There aren’t very many people who can claim that they personally changed the public debate about an issue. Reynolds could. Before her crusade, no one was really talking about the under-treatment of pain. The media was still wrapped up in scare stories about “accidental addiction” to prescription painkillers and telling dramatic (and sometimes false) tales about patients whose lazy doctors got them hooked on Oxycontin. Reynolds toured the country to point out that, in fact, the real problem is that pain patients are suffering, particularly chronic pain patients. After Reynolds, the major newsweeklies, the New York Times, and a number of other national media outlets were asking if the DEA’s war on pain doctors had gone too far. …

She was tireless. I often thought she was a bit too idealistic, or at least that she set her goals to high. She told me once that she wouldn’t consider her work done until the Supreme Court declared the Controlled Substances Act unconstitutional. …

Reynolds started winning. She deserves a good deal of the credit for getting Richard Paey out of prison. She got sentences overturned, and got other doctors acquitted. …

Of course, the government doesn’t like a rabble rouser. It becomes especially wary of rabble rousers who begin to have some success. And so as Reynolds’ advocacy began to move the ball and get real results, the government bit back. When Reynolds began a campaign on behalf of Kansas physician Stephen Schneider, who had been indicted for overprescribing painkillers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tonya Treadway launched a shameless and blatantly vindictive attack on free speech. Treadway opened a criminal investigation into Reynolds and her organization, likening Reynolds’ advocacy to obstruction of justice. Treadway then issued a sweeping subpoena for all email correspondence, phone records, and other documents that, had Reynolds complied, would have been the end of her organization. …

So Reynolds fought the subpoena, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And she lost. Not only did she lose, but the government, with compliance from the federal courts, kept the entire fight secret. The briefs for the case are secret. The judges’ rulings are secret. Reynolds was barred from sharing the briefs she filed with the press. Perversely, Treadway had used the very grand jury secrecy intended to protect the accused to not only take down Reynolds and her organization, but to protect herself from any public scrutiny for doing so. …

Despite all that, the last time I spoke with Reynolds, she working on plans to start a new advocacy group for pain patients. She was an unwearying, unwavering activist for personal freedom.

And she died fighting. Rest in peace.

Read the whole thing.

Lyrics:

Grandma got indefinitely detained now
coming home to visit Christmas Eve
You could say she had a right to counsel
but some folks in the Congress disagree

she was flying home to our house
when she got checked by TSA
thought she might be Abdulmutallab
when they looked at her X-ray

Her hair had recently been colored
she paid cash for her Christmas gifts
two things apparently the Congress
says just might make you a terrorist

Grandma got indefinitely detained now
coming home to visit Christmas Eve
you could claim there’s no right to due process
but check the 5th amendment and you’ll see

they say they need to have these powers
to help protect this free country
but if it takes these steps to do so
what is it we are protecting?

Now she’s an enemy combatant
as if that makes any sense
the only thing that she’s combating
is her unpredictable incontinence

Grandma got indefinitely detained now
trying to come visit Christmas Eve
they took her rights in order to…protect rights..
the most genius plan ever in history

Grandma got indefinitely detained now
never made it home on Christmas day
she always wanted to live in Miami
at least now she’s 90 miles away

Gary Johnson will quit the Republican primaries and seek the Libertarian Party nomination instead, POLITICO has learned.

The former two-term New Mexico governor, whose campaign for the GOP nomination never caught fire, will make the announcement at a press conference in Santa Fe on Dec. 28. Johnson state directors will be informed of his plans on a campaign conference call Tuesday night, a Johnson campaign source told POLITICO.

[…]

According to a Public Policy Polling survey of New Mexico conducted Dec. 10-12, Johnson as a Libertarian candidate could impact the vote in his home state.

PPP found Johnson would draw between 26 and 30 percent of GOP votes, between 12 and 16 percent of Democratic votes and win independents, in a race with either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich as the GOP nominee.

As for Ron Paul, the establishment G.O.P. is getting very frightened at the prospect of his possible victory in Iowa:

Conservatives and Republican elites in the state are divided over who to support for the GOP nomination, but they almost uniformly express concern over the prospect that Ron Paul and his army of activist supporters may capture the state’s 2012 nominating contest — an outcome many fear would do irreparable harm to the future role of the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

[…]

Paul poses an existential threat to the state’s cherished kick-off status, say these Republicans, because he has little chance to win the GOP nomination and would offer the best evidence yet that the caucuses reward candidates who are unrepresentative of the broader party.

“It would make the caucuses mostly irrelevant if not entirely irrelevant,” said Becky Beach, a longtime Iowa Republican who helped Presidents Bush 41 and Bush 43 here. “It would have a very damaging effect because I don’t think he could be elected president and both Iowa and national Republicans wouldn’t think he represents the will of voters.”

If Ron Paul puts an end to this ridiculous caucus system where certain states like Iowa and New Hampshire gets special consideration over the rest of the states, then I say that in itself is a good thing. Referring back to the famous quote of Mahatma Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” it now appears that Paul is now in the second and third stage because the establishment can no longer ignore him, his support, or his message.

This doesn’t mean the establishment won’t try. The article continues:

Leading Republicans, looking to put the best possible frame on a Paul victory, are already testing out a message for what they’ll say if the 76-year-old Texas congressman is triumphant.

The short version: Ignore him.

“People are going to look at who comes in second and who comes in third,” said Gov. Terry Branstad.

“If [Mitt] Romney comes in a strong second, it definitely helps him going into New Hampshire and the other states.”

Go ahead and ignore Ron Paul Gov. Branstad. Ignore him all the way to the White House.

Right wing talk radio, when not ignoring Paul, fight him by framing his supporters as a bunch of wackos. The long knives are coming out. When they aren’t mischaracterizing his sensible foreign policy they now go to the newsletter issue to try to scare away possible supporters. Funny, this wasn’t a topic of conversation until very recently. That’s the price of being a front runner I suppose.

I would only hope that those who are considering supporting Paul on the basis of the newsletter controversy to ask themselves the following question: “Is Ron Paul a racist and does he support the contents of the newsletters?”

If the answer is yes, then by all means don’t vote for Ron Paul.

Paul has disavowed the contents of the newsletters on numerous occasions. While I’m not completely satisfied with how he has handled the newsletter issue, I take him at his word. I don’t think he is a racist. I would even go as far to say that life for people of color would be much improved under a Paul administration than under the Obama administration. For starters, Paul would end the war on (some) drugs and would most likely pardon all non-violent drug offenders – regardless of race.

This is just the beginning. As Paul’s poll numbers raise, buckle up…it’s going to be a rough ride.

Clearly, we fall far short from having Bill of Rights that we adhere to and that was designed for our future posterity over 220 years ago. In the end, it is public opinion that most restrains political power — not words on paper, not judges, not politicians’ promises. A population that is not decidedly and passionately against violations of their liberties will see their rights stripped away. If we want to have a Bill of Rights Day worth celebrating, we must demand that officials at all levels respect our freedoms — and not let the government get away with abusing them.

Gregory is right: preserving the Bill of Rights ultimately rests with all of us.

Arlington, Va.—The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today issued a unanimous opinion granting victory to cancer patients and their supporters from across the nation in a landmark constitutional challenge brought against the U.S. Attorney General. The lawsuit, filed by the Institute for Justice on behalf of cancer patients, their families, an internationally renowned marrow-transplant surgeon, and a California nonprofit group, seeks to allow individuals to create a pilot program that would encourage more bone-marrow donations by offering modest compensation—such as a scholarship or housing allowance—to donors. The program had been blocked by a federal law, the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA), which makes compensating donors of these renewable cells a major felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Under today’s decision, this pilot program will be perfectly legal, provided the donated cells are taken from a donor’s bloodstream rather than the hip. (Approximately 70 percent of all bone marrow donations are offered through the arm in a manner similar to donating whole blood.) Now, as a result of this legal victory, not only will the pilot programs the plaintiffs looked to create be considered legal, but any form of compensation for marrow donors would be legal within the boundaries of the Ninth Circuit, which includes California, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and various other U.S. territories.

[...]

Rowes concluded, “This case isn’t about medicine; everyone agrees that bone marrow transplants save lives. This case is about whether individuals can make choices about compensating someone or receiving compensation for making a bone marrow donation without the government stopping them.”

In the first video below, Mark Kirk (R-IL) in his floor speech explains how Sections 1031 and 1032 violate the principles of the Bill of Rights by reading the applicable amendments. Sen. Kirk makes some geography based distinctions in determining whether U.S. citizens have due process rights (which I disagree with; geography should not matter) but otherwise does a great job of explaining to his fellow senators why keeping these sections in the bill is a terrible mistake.

Though he voted against the offending sections of the bill, Sen. Kirk ultimately voted with the majority in supporting the overall legislation.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on the other hand supported neither. Paul’s floor speech is equally compelling and perhaps even more chilling than that of Kirk’s. Could you find yourself an innocent victim of this bill? Do you have any missing fingers? Do you have more than a seven day supply of food? How many firearms do you own and if so what kind of ammunition do you use? Depending on your answers to these questions, it’s possible that you could find yourself detained, perhaps at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, indefinitely with very little legal recourse according to Sen. Paul.

Related Posts:

The Late David Nolan’s Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Fears One Step Closer to Being Realized

Are You or Someone You Know a Victim of the Drone Mentality?

Nolan Exposes McCain’s Antipathy for Civil Liberties in Arizona Senate Debate

Quote of the Day: Americans Cheer the Assassination of the Fifth Amendment Edition

Obama: Judge, Jury, and Executioner in Chief

During his debate with Sen. McCain, Nolan warned voters of what he called a “dangerous, evil, un-American” bill which McCain co-sponsored called S. 3081, the “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010.” This bill would authorize indefinite detention of American citizens without trial. Nolan was so outraged by this bill he said that this was one reason he decided to run against Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain brushed off Nolan’s comments saying that Nolan “may be a little bit biased.”

Fast forward just over a year later, Sen. McCain has sponsored another piece of legislation hidden in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2012 that is very similar. One of the more concerning aspects of the bill is Section 1031:

SEC. 1031. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE.

(a) In General- Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.

(b) Covered Persons- A covered person under this section is any person as follows:
(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.
(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.
(c) Disposition Under Law of War- The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following:
(1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
(2) Trial under chapter 47A of title 10, United States Code (as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 (title XVIII of Public Law 111-84)).
(3) Transfer for trial by an alternative court or competent tribunal having lawful jurisdiction.
(4) Transfer to the custody or control of the person’s country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.
(d) Construction- Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
(e) Requirement for Briefings of Congress- The Secretary of Defense shall regularly brief Congress regarding the application of the authority described in this section, including the organizations, entities, and individuals considered to be `covered persons’ for purposes of subsection (b)(2).

The next section, Section 1032 adds some confusing language as to whether American citizens can truly be held indefinitely:

SEC. 1032. REQUIREMENT FOR MILITARY CUSTODY.

(a) Custody Pending Disposition Under Law of War-
(1) IN GENERAL- Except as provided in paragraph (4), the Armed Forces of the United States shall hold a person described in paragraph (2) who is captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) in military custody pending disposition under the law of war.
(2) COVERED PERSONS- The requirement in paragraph (1) shall apply to any person whose detention is authorized under section 1031 who is determined–
(A) to be a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force that acts in coordination with or pursuant to the direction of al-Qaeda; and
(B) to have participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack against the United States or its coalition partners.
(3) DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR- For purposes of this subsection, the disposition of a person under the law of war has the meaning given in section 1031(c), except that no transfer otherwise described in paragraph (4) of that section shall be made unless consistent with the requirements of section 1033.
(4) WAIVER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY- The Secretary of Defense may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) if the Secretary submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States.
(b) Applicability to United States Citizens and Lawful Resident Aliens-
(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.
(2) LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to a lawful resident alien of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.

Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel of the ACLU points out that the language contained in Section 1032 only applies to Section 1032. To put it another way, according to Section 1031 U.S. citizens can be detained indefinitely and even sent to another country without the normal civil liberties protections guaranteed in the Fifth, Sixth, and possibly Eighth Amendments.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) introduced Amendment No. 1107 to the bill that would have mitigated much of the civil liberties concerns found in 1031 but it was soundly defeated by a 61-37 vote. Only two Republicans, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted in favor of the Udall amendment.

Now the vote for the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2012 is set for today, December 1, 2011. There isn’t much time left to stop this horribly unconstitutional bill from being passed.

This being said, President Obama has threatened to veto the bill if these sections are still in place when it hits his desk. I’m not quite sure how the president can say on one hand he can send drones to kill American citizens while on the other say he opposes indefinite detention of American citizens but a veto would be the correct response regardless.

President Obama might well veto this bill but I have no confidence that any of the Republican challengers would veto similar legislation in the future save Gary Johnson (who is sadly very much a long shot at this point), Ron Paul, or perhaps Jon Huntsman.

We can now see that David Nolan’s concerns he expressed in the 2010 debate were well founded after all.