For you Fourth Amendment novices at home, the amendment says:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.^”

To start the week, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that police can take your DNA in a criminal case, without a warrant from a judge, if you are arrested. That DNA goes into a national database, even if you aren’t tried and convicted under the circumstances you were arrested under. As a conservative I am all for law and order, but what happened to innocent until proven guilty.  Go ahead and take my DNA copper, but wait until I have had due process and have been charged and arraigned, with lawyer consultation.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and said that the “quick and painless” DNA swabbing procedure was indeed a permissible search under the Fourth Amendment, and it was more like police matching you up to a mug shot or fingerprint. This is BS.  this is in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The colorful conservative stalwart, Justice Antonin Scalia, was not amused.

“I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection,” he said in an epic dissenting opinion. (He also used the word “panopticon,” which caused a sensation it itself.) Agreeing with Scalia in an unusual event were three liberal justices on the bench.

The debate among academics and Fourth Amendment lovers was already at a fever pitch as the week continued—and two Fourth Amendment bombshells exploded on Wednesday and Thursday night.

First, blogger Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian leaked a highly classified document—a secret court order—that showed that the National Security Agency has access to basic phone data for all Verizon customers.

The NSA obtained the data with the permission of a secret court in Washington called FISC, and it didn’t need to prove probable cause before seizing the phone records of millions of Americans. What is it with the Obama administration?  It is kinda of scary how easy it is for them to trample on our rights.

That didn’t sit well with Fourth Amendment fans, the press and a lot of politicians.

The Obama administration responded with a statement, saying that the data was needed for national security purposes and investigators didn’t listen to phone conversations like they would in a wiretap situation. This sounds like “wiggle” excuses.

The bigger bombshell hit Thursday night, when the Washington Post and Greenwald, in separate articles, revealed a huge secret government program called Prism, in which major Internet companies allowed the NSA to access user information directly—again with the approval of the secret FISC court.

The user information purportedly includes e-mail, text messages, video chats and personal data.

Two statements from the Obama administration followed on Thursday night, from the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. One statement said the leaked documents posted by the Guardian and Post had “numerous inaccuracies” and that provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allowed such actions pertaining to non-U.S. persons living outside of the United States.

A second statement from Clapper contained some information he said was now declassified about how the NSA obtains “business records” like phone-call information.

“There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which ensures that those activities comply with the Constitution and laws and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties,” he said. I think Mr Clapper is in a fog or trance if he thinks the statement “There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities” makes us feel more secure.  As Ronald Reagan said, “A government big enough to give you everything you need, is big enough to take everything you have.”

“All information that is acquired under this program is subject to strict, court-imposed restrictions on review and handling. The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization,” Clapper added.

Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard that requires a lower burden of proof than probable cause as a justification for a search.

On Friday, opinion writers at prominent media outlets around the country were defending the Fourth Amendment, and condemning the government’s apparently huge, and albeit probably legal, domestic spying operation. The liberal press is finally waking up and smelling the coffee.

“If the collection of phone-call data is so innocuous and routine, why are the surveillance court’s orders stamped top secret? Why can’t we know more about this snooping?” asked Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post. “We have to ask these questions now, while we still remember what privacy is. Or was.”

The folks at Fox News were high-fiving their rivals at the New York Times, after the liberal-leaning newspaper took the Obama administration to task in a searing editorial.

“The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it,” said the Times’ editorial board.

“This was a big change for a paper that has both endorsed the president and supported him throughout his presidency,” said Dan Gainor on Foxnews.com. “The Times sounded practically Tea Partian in its critique.”

Don’t look for the controversy to slow down for two reasons.

First, The Guardian’s Greenwald, a former attorney-turned-blogger who reportedly now lives in Brazil, says more revelations are coming—and he was expecting some kind of conflict with U.S. legal authorities.

“I’m going to go ahead and take the Constitution at its word that we’re guaranteed the right of a free press,” he added.

Second, Clapper was pretty clear in his statements that his agency saw the leaks in the Guardian and Washington Post as a national security matter.

“The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation,” Clapper said.

If the government pursues charges against the people who leaked the documents to the media outlets, or even against the reporters, it will set up another clash involving the First Amendment as well as the Fourth Amendment.

The government was able to get phone records of Fox News reporter James Rosen after a warrant was approved by a District of Columbia judge, in which Rosen was called a “co-conspirator.” That decision outraged First Amendment supporters.

]]> https://thinkingpatriots.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/the-u-s-constitution-took-a-beating-this-week/feed/ 1 DG https://thinkingpatriots.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/obama-and-the-peter-principle-again-or-worse/ https://thinkingpatriots.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/obama-and-the-peter-principle-again-or-worse/#comments Fri, 07 Jun 2013 02:34:25 +0000 http://thinkingpatriots.wordpress.com/?p=191 It appears the White House has quietly allowed military aid to Egypt with the mainstream liberal press helping him cover it up.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Secretary of State John Kerry quietly acted last month to give Egypt $1.3 billion in U.S.
military aid, deciding that this was in the national interest despite Egypt’s failure to meet democracy standards.
Kerry made the decision well before an Egyptian court this week convicted 43 democracy workers, including 16 Americans,
in what the United States regards as a politically motivated case against pro-democracy non-governmental organizations.
Rights groups believe Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi is retreating from democratic freedoms, notably in a new civil
society law and in proposals for judicial reform that critics see as a way to purge judges perceived as hostile to the
government.
Despite stating in a May 9 memo that “we are not satisfied with the extent of Egypt’s progress and are pressing for a more
inclusive democratic process and the strengthening of key democratic institutions,” Kerry said the aid should go forward.
Ruled for three decades by authoritarian former President Hosni Mubarak, a close U.S. ally, Egypt has long been seen as a
bulwark of stability in the Middle East, notably because it was the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
Under U.S. law, for the $1.3 billion to flow the secretary of state must certify that the Egyptian government “is supporting
the transition to civilian government, including holding free and fair elections, implementing policies to protect freedom of
expression, association and religion, and due process of law.”

The legislation, championed by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, also gives the U.S. government the ability to
waive that condition if it deems this in the U.S. national security interest and provides a detailed justification.
According to the May 9 memo, the U.S. national interests served by the aid include increasing security in the Sinai, helping
prevent attacks from Gaza into Israel, countering terrorism and securing transit through the Suez Canal.
“A strong U.S. security partnership with Egypt, underpinned by FMF (Foreign Military Financing), maintains a channel to
Egyptian military leadership, who are key opinion makers in the country,” Kerry wrote in the memo which was obtained by
Reuters.

“A decision to waive restrictions on FMF to Egypt is necessary to uphold these interests as we encourage Egypt to continue
its transition to democracy,” he added.

The memo was sent to congressional appropriations committees without fanfare and some aides did not know of its
existence.

In contrast, when the State Department last year waived the restrictions, it announced the decision and explained its
reasoning to reporters.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, argued that the
State Department should have been more open about the decision and had lost a chance to try to influence Egypt on rights.
“By issuing a waiver without any public discussion, it has at the very least missed a significant opportunity to … raise its
concerns about the political trajectory in Egypt,” she said.

Wittes said that last year’s waiver occurred at a time when Egypt had made some progress toward greater democratic
reforms, while this year “the waiver was issued in the context of a negative trajectory in Egypt’s transition to democracy.”
U.S. quietly allows military aid to Egypt despite rights concerns – Yahoo!… http://news.yahoo.com/u-quietly-allows-military-aid-egypt-despite-rights…

1 of 2 6/6/2013 7:22 PM
(Reporting By Arshad Mohammed; editing by Christopher Wilson)

Come on America, wake up and smell the coffee.  President Obama has an agenda that is not in the best interest of American democracy.  But, that is okay because of my next books will be titled, “Doing business in Socialist America.”