However, the government is arresting those speaking out … and violently crushing peaceful assemblies which attempt to petition the government for redress.I really hate to say anything nice about Rand Paul, but he and I are on the same page here...
A federal judge found that the law allowing indefinite detention of Americans without due process has a “chilling effect” on free speech. And see this and this.
The threat of being labeled a terrorist for exercising our First Amendment rights certainly violates the First Amendment. The government is using laws to crush dissent, and it’s gotten so bad that even U.S. Supreme Court justices are saying that we are descending into tyranny.
Senator Rand Paul correctly notes:These genuine assaults on our liberties have occurred under both Republican and Democratic presidents. This is not a partisan matter, although too many people insist on that framing.
The domestic use of drones to spy on Americans clearly violates the Fourth Amendment and limits our rights to personal privacy.Paul introduced a bill to “protect individual privacy against unwarranted governmental intrusion through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles commonly called drones.”
Emptywheel notes in a post entitled “The OTHER Assault on the Fourth Amendment in the NDAA? Drones at Your Airport?”:
Personally, I have no interest in owning an assault weapon. I'd rather have drone-free skies.
4 comments:
The person running Washington's Blog is an ace in my book. He (?) does lots of heavy lifting in research and providing links for the less energetic of us to follow.
One of the few memorable quotes from our last president was "Stop waving the constitution in my face. The constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper." That pretty well sums up the history of our republic over the last 10 or 12years, in my opinion. If the Chief Executive claims the right to kill any of us whenever he feels like it, then you have no rights at all. None. To draw parallels between our current situation and that of Germany in the 1930s is like shooting fish in a barrel. This is no longer a nation of laws; the law means whatever some corrupt and fascist judge says it means, just like in National Socialist Germany.
I have been planning on turning the comment below \ into a DailyPUMA or AlexLOGIC article, but I'll post it here first.
One's right to keep and bear arms is not enough.
It should be...One's right to keep and bear arms, AS A LAST RESORT.
Unfortunately, most second amendment fans don't seem that interested in the resorts that should precede the right to bear arms.
Most of the Second Amendment "fans" I know are pretty committed to the rest of the Bill of Rights, as well. Perhaps we're just associating with different groups of "gun nuts", Alessandro ;-).
Personally, I'm kind of attached to the whole thing - and the fact that I personally choose not to exercise some of those rights doesn't mean that I want to deprive others of them.
1I wonder, would a drone still be am unwarranted intrusion on individual privacy if it delivered a transvaginal probe?
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