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    the pussification of the American male..., 2007-10-19 12:19:00 | Main | This Who Killed the Electric C..., 2007-10-24 23:03:44

    restoring our momentary lapse from tyranny:

    I think it's interesting that up until 1961 or so there wasn't really any 4th Amendment to speak of but in immaterial spirit.

    Well, not exactly. 1961 was the same year the Brothers Kennedy began illegally wiretapping, bugging, harassing, and secretly mucking about in the private life of MLK Jr.. Why, they didn't even need congress to grant retroactive immunity against legal prosecution after the fact, so safe were they in lashing out at private citizens with bugs and wiretaps.

    And 1961 was just the first time it became impractical for the states to do that. The Feds were barred from using evidence acquired in violation of the 4th back in 1914, shortly after which they started violating the 4th Amendment in grand proportions during the Palmer Raids.

    And in between there were the paranoid efforts of COINTELPRO to destroy whatever was left of the CPUSA after the McCarthy purges of anybody to the left of Ed Gein. And that of course was then rapidly expanded into a covert assault on anybody who read the newspaper regularly or owned a gunrack.

    Like bookends to that there's FDR's spying on American Jews and Clinton's spying on Catholic priests.

    So why not raid mobile soup kitchens? Is that not in keeping with our proudest traditions?

    Why would the Federal Government, after all, care about the exclusionary rule if they're just trying to "frame" you by blowing up your car?

    So it's fairly pathetic, I think, that we must stoop to defend a 4th Amendment that has never been particularly effective in securing the people of their effects. Nevertheless here we are defending it. If it remains aborted in spirit it will surely never be born of fact.


:: posted by buermann @ 2007-10-22 13:31:46 CST | link





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