High court hears arguments on Indianapolis drug checkpoints

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:03:02 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 4, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
High court hears arguments on Indianapolis drug checkpoints

The U.S. Supreme Court began its fall session Oct. 2 with 47 cases on the docket to be heard ... so far.

It may be a good sign that the court starts off by biting off a sizeable chunk of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence -- City of Indianapolis vs. Edmond (case 99-1030.)

In July of 1999, Indianapolis police suspended their practice of setting up roadblocks to facilitate random drug inspections of motorists along interstates and city streets, after the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that this was an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The city appealed. (Sadly if predictably, the Clinton administration has also now joined Indianapolis in its attempts to gut the Bill of Rights.)

In its initial ruling, the appeals court noted the Supreme Court has upheld sobriety and border checkpoints, in which police look for suspected drunken drivers and for illegal immigrants.

But this case is different because there is no immediacy, as opposed to random searches designed to nab drunks who pose an immediate danger to fellow motorists. "Indianapolis does not claim to be concerned with protecting highway safety against drivers high on drugs," the appeals court noted.

The case is, in reality, a class-action lawsuit brought by the Indiana Civil Liberties Union on behalf of James Edmond and Joell Palmer, two motorists stopped but not arrested at the roadblocks.

Edmond reports that, although a drug-sniffing dog gave no indication of the presence of drugs, police thoroughly searched his car's interior -- even going so far as to disassemble and inspect the inside of a flashlight.

Palmer reports he was ordered out of his vehicle and frisked by officers, even though he did not waive his Fourth Amendment rights.

Palmer further reports the police officer at the roadblock told him he "had no rights."

Unfortunately, that report is no longer hard to believe.

What's most pitiful about such cases is the kind of hair-splitting they allow the high court to indulge in (though this is hardly the fault of the plaintiff attorneys, forced to acknowledge that hair-splitting is the best they're likely to get, when it comes to a political hot-button issue like "drugs.")

Imagine the popular outrage if the court continually parsed and shaved down some of our other constitutional rights -- say, freedom of the press or of religion -- the way they have taken to whittling down the Second Amendment, the Fourth, and the 14th.

In that hypothetical alternative reality, a federal ban on messianic or revivalist churches might be judged OK because of the "overriding government concern" with protecting potential parishioners against another Jim Jones or another "Heaven's Gate" suicide cult -- while our alternative-universe "Bizarro" court would busy itself drawing fine and arbitrary distinctions based on stained glass and the color and length of choir robes in order to justify its finding that plain old Presbyterians and Catholics need not participate in the new government registry of "dangerous religion licensees" ... yet.

Or, banning books that teach people how to repair firearms might receive the court's OK given the government's "pressing mandate to stop the trade in 'illegal' firearms," while "Last of the Mohicans" would still be allowable in libraries despite the lamentable way it celebrates facility with firearms ... providing it's shelved where only adults can find it, of course.

Americans would rightly regard such "partial" book censorship or regulation of religion based on hair-splitting distinctions as a dangerous whittling down of our First Amendment rights. Barring only child pornography and cults that practice cannibalism and ritual slaughter (crimes in and of themselves), all Americans know they have a right to attend the church, temple or synagogue of their choice without being subject to police officers "dropping in" without a warrant "just to check" our freedom-of-religion permits or "just to make sure" the sermon doesn't violate some new government edict -- the same we we're free to buy and read any book we please.

So why aren't we as jealous of our other liberties?

How on earth were so many Americans -- especially the lawyers we now call judges -- convinced that some of the planks of the Bill of Rights don't mean what they say ... including the one that guarantees us "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. ..."

What good does it do to say the government can't inspect what we choose to keep in our homes and offices ... if its agents are free to stop us on a whim on the street, pat us down, and even require us to perform for them an "observed bowel movement" (as the courts now permit Customs and DEA agents to demand at our airports)?

The Bill of Rights is the highest law of the land. If government police find various newly invented government proscriptions difficult or impossible to enforce without trampling the privacy guaranteed us by these amendments, then the proper course is not to start whittling down our freedoms, but instead to re-evaluate the wisdom and viability of the fruitless and counterproductive government intervention in question.

If a crime has no immediately indentifiable victim, it is indeed hard to detect and prosecute. So why try?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (subscribe by calling N.iles at 612-895-8757.) His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

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Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

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Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

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-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair

End the War on Freedom

High court hears arguments on Indianapolis drug checkpoints