This is some scary, scary stuff! 
I wasn’t aware of some astonishing rulings from the Supreme Court that virtually dismantle the 4th, 5th & 6th Amendments in instances where the alleged offense is alcohol or drug related. How does this grab you- no right to a jury trial for a DUI? No 5th Amendment right to refuse to incriminate yourself with a blood test? No 4th Amendment protection against unlawful search & seizure, so long as the search proves fruitful to police!
Amazing. Terrifying. This should [size=150]scare the hell[/size] out of all of us. 
you know how medical marijuana is legal in california? federal gestapo still goes over there and busts people anyway.
you can get a license to grow a lot of it and sell it, which is what one guy did. so the feds bust him and put him on trial. listen to this…
the jury was not allowed to know that he had a license from california. all they were allowed to know was that he sold lots of weed. thats it. after they convicted him and sent him away for like 10 years or something, they were told the truth and were all very upset and wish they could go back and fix it.
the obvious marijuana conspiracy is the only real explanation for why the gov is such a bunch of jackasses.
“Marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man” - francis young, DEA judge
the jails are so ridiculously overcrowded, its really a gigantic crisis that leads judges to give smaller sentences, unless of course there is a drug war imposed mandatory minimum.
and marijuana is the number one reason why anybody is in there. its either 600,000 people or 60% of the jail population.
The Justice system is being lazy now. They’ve raped the 6th ammendment to save the time they feel is wasted dealing with so many DUI cases. All they really want is to get as many cases overwith as possible…so they can get paid more (speculatory).
I wonder…if the pigs search your home or whatever, and their search isn’t fruitful, how do they pay the price for their unlawfulness? How does the system pay for its fuck up? Would you think the system would be generous enough to give back an amount of taxes you paid, considering it’s your money that supported them when they screwed up? I doubt they would.
Same thing goes for that 5th Amend alteration…who pays the price when you’re found innocent? Will they just say, sorry, we made a mistake, and then kick you out back into society without any compensation for your trouble and cooperation?
What kind of pisses me off the most is that Bush said the word “freedom” 27 times and the word “liberty” 15 times in his second inaugural…and now this?
America is dying folks…the dream is dying.
well that kind of pisses me off a little bit. you know, JUST a little.
of course, the first thing i thought of before i read it was (say it with me) “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.” (Ben Franklin if you don’t know)
but reading the article, it sounds more as if those liberties are not being given up, but taken away. (and that actually DOES surprise me more, believe it or not.) this has long been a problem in our country for one reason. POWER CORRUPTS. these people get into office and forget that they’re not there because they’re so great, but because there’s 250 million people in this country paying them to make their lives better. and those few that do think of it that way are too easily convinced that drugs and alcohol are such a big problem that these laws will do some good.
i’ve heard that there were also many other things like that in The U.S. Patriot Act, but i don’t have the attention span to read it all, or the ability since it’s written in lawyer.
You hit on an important point that I only made peripherally, creation imperfect- generally when we lose rights, we’re partly to blame. That is to say, a bill is passed that crosses the line and the politicians pause, waiting to see if anyone will raise hell. No one does, and emboldened, they creep a little further. We could of course write our congressmen & scream and yell, basically forcing them to acknowledge us- then they either must backpedal or face being voted out of office.
But not this time. A longstanding Supreme Court handed down some stunning body blows to liberty and we basically have no recourse. Are the ancient justices suffering from senility? Their collective records show most of them to be fairly liberal in their reading of the law and politically somewhat right of center. It’s like they changed their minds overnight.
Blame Pat Robertson, that bastard. Remember he made those threats hidden in his “suggestions” of certain justices that should retire.
yeah, i agree, phaedrus, but it’s not like we can scream and yell at our surpreme court. they can’t backpedal or be voted out, plus it’s not like they’d hear us way up behind that bench with their hearing aids turned off. our government has a lot of problems, but it seems to be o.k. as long as someone reasonably smart and moral is in charge.
this is totally unrelated but i think you’d like it: http://www.thewalkfordemocracy.org
yeah, i agree, phaedrus, but it’s not like we can scream and yell at our surpreme court. they can’t backpedal or be voted out, plus it’s not like they’d hear us way up behind that bench with their hearing aids turned off. our government has a lot of problems, but it seems to be o.k. as long as someone reasonably smart and moral is in charge.
this is totally unrelated but i think you’d like it: http://www.thewalkfordemocracy.org