FTL2008-06-13.mp3

Dick Marple was running the FIJA booth at PorcFest this year and on Friday went on FTL to talk about some of the foundations in New Hampshire for jury nullification. The interview starts at about 104 minutes in and goes to the end of the show.

http://www.out-law.com/page-8884 

The US government, through the National Security Agency, has been tapping phone lines without court warrants since shortly after the terrorist attacks in the US of September 2001. The till-then secret programme was revealed by the New York Times in 2005.

The government claims that the actions were legal but has made all details of the programme classified. This causes problems for the ACLU since only those who have been wiretapped can sue, but the information about who has been tapped is kept secret.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s national security project, said that the case raised worries about the unchecked power of the president who, as the executive arm, is just one branch of government.

“It’s very disturbing that the president’s actions will not be reviewed by the Supreme Court. It shouldn’t be left to executive branch officials alone to determine what limits apply to their own surveillance activities and whether those limits are being honoured,” he said. “Allowing the executive branch to police itself flies in the face of the constitutional system of checks and balances.”

The ACLU had tried to appeal a verdict of a US Court of Appeal which ruled that it could not prove that its communications had been monitored, and so could not prove that the programme had harmed any party to the case. It had sued on behalf of itself, journalist and scholars.

Separate law suits are being conducted in the US against the telecommunications companies that allowed the surveillance to happen without court-issued warrants.

There are also political struggles over amendments to US law that would allow warrantless wiretaps of non-US citizens in the US who are communicating with people overseas.

A temporary measure expired over the weekend and the Democrat-controlled Congress refused to make the law permanent.

That law included controversial immunity for telecoms companies. Congress has proposed a law that does extend wiretapping but does not grant telcos immunity from prosecution for their actions.

“The court’s unwillingness to act makes it even more important that Congress insist on legislative safeguards that will protect civil liberties without jeopardizing national security,” said Steven Shapiro, the ACLU’s legal director.

You want to prove to the judicial branch that the executive branch is breaking the law and show that the legislative branch is at least complacent if not helping them do so. To have a case you must prove you’ve been harmed but the only proof is held by those you are accusing. They won’t confirm or deny the existence of the proof nor would they turn it over because it’s a matter of national security. The judicial system says that since you can’t get the evidence you don’t have a case.

Does anyone else find this a little troubling?

http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org Docket 07-680, 07-681
petition for writ of certiorari: A document which a losing party files with the Supreme Court asking the Supreme Court to review the decision of a lower court. It includes a list of the parties, a statement of the facts of the case, the legal questions presented for review, and arguments as to why the Court should grant the writ.
writ of certiorari: A decision by the Supreme Court to hear an appeal from a lower court.

The Statement of the Claim in the complaint says:

1. This Complaint arises from the failure of the President of the United States and his Attorney General and his Secretary of the Treasury and his Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, and the failure of the United States Congress, to properly respond to Plaintiffs’ Petitions for Redress of Grievances against their government, namely: grievances relating to violations of the U.S. Constitution’s war powers, taxing, money, and “privacy” clauses.

2. This complaint also arises from the Executive Branch of the United States government in its retaliation against individual Plaintiffs for: Petitioning the government for a Redress of Grievances, namely grievances relating to violations of the U.S. Constitution’s war powers, taxing, money and “privacy” clauses, and for Peaceably Assembling and Associating with other individuals under the umbrella of the We The People Foundation for Constitutional Education and the We The People Congress.

I heard Bob Schulz speak at the Liberty Forum though not his primary presentation. I’ve been familiar with WTP for some time but their 1990’s style website always gave it a dilapidated feel and I never bother to look into what they were doing. I just found out about the lawsuit at the Liberty Forum and he had said they expected the SCOTUS to issue a judgment on whether to hear their appeal. As I suspected they denied their appeal and left the lower courts ruling intact. As far as I understand they said that you can petition the government for a redress of grievances but they don’t need to respond. I’m not so sure the original intent was to say it’s OK that people can ask the government questions without them answering. Otherwise the right to redress the government would be no different than the right of free speech. When I argue with people about the problems of the government, how they do things through force and it’s difficult to combat what they do, and they respond “we are the government” I have to try to describe how the government may supposedly represent us and is physically made up of our neighbors but we are decentralized. We have lives to live. Jobs to work and kids to feed. Their lives and jobs are expanding government and controlling people. We have an uphill battle. There is that quote which goes something like “One activist is worth a thousand layman.” According to Data360.org their is 19,514,000 government employees. That’s at local, state and federal levels. Nearly 7% of the population. Even if you account for freedom moles working within the system at a 1:1000 ratio or even 1:100 or even 1:10… we are outnumbered. I hope things like this help show those individuals that the deck is stacked against us. They have the upper hand and we have to work twice as hard to get things done. We screw up and our boss can be fired in a heartbeat. If a politician does something so blatant to upset those he represents he’s probably got the average of over a year till you can kick him out and than you can almost guarantee that the guy who tries to replace him will be almost the same regardless of what they say.

We need more activists who are on our team to help balance out the field. Hopefully the Ron Paul Revolution will help with that.

http://blogs.enotes.com/…

Moore v. Andreno, 06-3623 (2nd Cir., Oct. 22, 2007)

While [the defendants] misapplied the relevant constitutional calculus, they are police officers, not lawyers or mathematicians.

That’s the logic behind this Fourth Amendment decision, in which the Second Circuit determines that officers who responded to a call from a woman who had broken into her ex’s locked study are entitled to qualified immunity for searching the study and finding drugs. According to the Court, although the police made a constitutional error, they did a reasonable job of resolving a difficult tension between the right to privacy in one’s home and the rights of victims of domestic violence.

The district court denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss on qualified immunity grounds, but the Second Circuit reverses. Applying a test set forth in a 1992 decision from the Second Circuit, the Court concludes that the officers violated the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights by assuming that Sines had authority to consent to their entry into the study. However, the Court further holds that the officers are entitled to qualified immunity.

I think Mike said it all: “Aren’t they charged with enforcing the law? Doesn’t the law include the Constitution? What excuse do they have for not knowing basic laws? They sure knew what law to charge the boyfriend under, didn’t they? Why is “ignorance of the law no excuse” when private people are charged with crimes? The criminal code is complex, and it’s understandable that lay people might not understand when his conduct is criminal. Shouldn’t lay persons be given the benefit of the doubt in such cases? Why not?”

Just another example of those in power protecting their own. How can you have any trust in those who are supposed to enforce the law if they don’t even know the most basic of them?

http://blogs.enotes.com/decision-blog/…

In a major constitutional ruling, a divided panel of the Sixth Circuit has struck down a federal statute that requires producers of sexually explicit images to keep records on the names and birth dates of the persons who appear in the images. The producers must make the records available for government inspection and place a compliance notice on the image that includes a street address for where the records can be found.

These record-keeping provisions, which are part of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988, are intended to ensure that pornographers are not using minors and make it easy to weed out legal images from illegal child pornography. But the photographers, publishers, filmmakers, and website operators who are subject to the record-keeping requirements claimed that they were too onerous, and that they violated the First Amendment.

This is good news. This statute wasn’t as bad as the DOJ wanting a list of every porn star but it’s death gives hope that similar ridiculous laws will be shot down. It’d be really entertaining if there was an organization which waited for these types of rulings and attempted to get those who supported the bill impeached for breaking their oath.