cannabisnews.com: Supreme Court Term To Focus on Fourth Amendment Supreme Court Term To Focus on Fourth Amendment Posted by FoM on October 02, 2000 at 08:12:13 PT By Frank J. Murray, The Washington Times Source: Washington Times The Supreme Court opens its 2000-2001 term today with a low-profile agenda lacking the drama of the past five years, when justices declared 26 acts of Congress unconstitutional and ruled on such divisive social issues as partial-birth abortion, public prayer and assisted suicide. Many cases among the 46 appeals already accepted for full review focus on local government powers, with Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure law the most recurrent theme. Those cases involve police matters that affect ordinary people, including: • Handcuffing and arresting Texas mother Gail Atwater for a seat-belt violation punishable by a maximum $50 fine, leaving her 4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter in the care of a passer-by. • Using high-tech military "thermal imaging" devices to detect a home marijuana farm cultivated under hot lights. • Giving police a city hospital's warrantless urinalyses of pregnant women who test positive for cocaine, under a law intended to protect fetal development. • Letting police dogs sniff for narcotics around cars stopped for document checks at Indianapolis roadblocks. • Police refusing to let an Illinois man enter his trailer home in an effort to prevent him from tampering with possible evidence inside before officers could obtain a search warrant. The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against authorities in the Indiana and Illinois cases, calling the use of police dogs a wholesale invasion of privacy. Federal appeals courts in three other circuits ruled that police acted properly in the seat-belt, thermal-imaging and cocaine-mom cases. Justices hear arguments in the police-dog case tomorrow at 10 a.m., and the cocaine-mom case at the same time on Wednesday. "In both of those cases, the test may come down to whether the purpose of the program was reasonable," said Washington lawyer Theodore Olson during his annual analysis of the docket for reporters. The American Civil Liberties Union pointedly opposes the official viewpoint in all five search-and-seizure cases, including referring positive cocaine tests to the police. "The implicit assumption in the 4th Circuit opinion that women have a diminished expectation of privacy solely because of their pregnancy is precisely the sort of paternalistic stereotype that the Supreme Court has long since rejected," said Steven Shapiro, the ACLU's national litigation director. Among other issues on which the ACLU took sides is the First Amendment right involved in banning disclosure to news media of material obtained by eavesdropping on a cell-phone conversation. The case being heard by the court involves a Pennsylvania radio talk-show host's use of tapes discussing a union battle, but the decision will govern a separate appeal stemming from a December 1996 Republican leadership conference call about the House Ethics Committee probe of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The term's overall headline quotient was dimmed considerably by last week's decision to put off the Microsoft antitrust case until an appeals court can review it. This morning, a court order will be issued denying most of the 1,748 other appeals considered at a Sept. 25 conference. Among those appeals is a challenge by 31 House members to President Clinton's constitutional authority to order U.S. forces into air-combat operations with NATO troops in Kosovo. The constitutional background of that case involves issues left unchallenged when President Harry S. Truman sent U.S. troops to fight under the U.N. flag in Korea. A major dispute about restrictions that Congress placed on Legal Services Corp. lawyers is set for argument at 11 a.m. Wednesday, pitting the controversial LSC against Congress in a case brought in the name of Carmen Velazquez, 56, a grandmother who was represented by a lawyer in a Bronx legal-aid program receiving LSC funds. Mrs. Velazquez claimed that New York's welfare-to-work program ignored her medical disability. The court will decide if Congress interfered with First Amendment rights by banning the use of LSC funds to attack laws or regulations governing welfare systems. "For Congress to bar lawyers from arguing the validity of laws on behalf of their clients is unprecedented in this nation," said Amanda Cooper of the Brennan Center for Justice, which represents Mrs. Velazquez at the high court. A major battle over air-quality regulations between the Environmental Protection Agency and American Trucking Associations produced two cases coupled for argument in an unusual two-hour session on Nov. 7. The ATA challenged Section 109 of the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments, in which Congress delegated to the EPA the authority to impose a two-tiered standard to regulate ozone emissions, without factoring in costs to industry. The primary test is public health, but a secondary standard allows limits "to protect the public welfare." "There is not one Chamber of Commerce member that is not affected by these rules. We'd like to see some restrictions on the EPA's unbridled authority," said Robin Conrad of the Chamber's National Litigation Center. "ATA and its supporters mistakenly argue that . . . EPA must consider non-health factors in setting [standards]," Solicitor General Seth P. Waxman said in his brief to the high court, suggesting the industry instead lobby Congress to change the law. "Congress concluded that standards must be set on the basis of what is necessary to protect public health and public welfare."Source: Washington Times (DC)Author: Frank J. Murray, The Washington TimesPublished: October 2, 2000 Copyright © 2000 News World Communications, Inc. Contact: letters washtimes.comWebsite: http://www.washtimes.com/Related Articles & Web Site:Supreme Court Web Sitehttp://www.supremecourtus.gov High Court To Review Roadblocks http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7221.shtmlSearch Protection Leads Court Agenda http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7206.shtmlJustices To Examine Police Powerhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7191.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #10 posted by observer on October 03, 2000 at 17:46:22 PT serfs, quote of the day Thank you kaptin and Lehder! Those are great background links for my rant, and I've just ordered "Making Sense of Tyranny"! [ Post Comment ] Comment #9 posted by FoM on October 02, 2000 at 18:58:59 PT: Thanks kaptinemo Thanks kapt,I'm not sure why I get broken links sometime. I hope if you or anyone has any problems while in CannabisNews that you will let me know. That's the only way to find out something isn't right sometimes. Since I redid my computer it is working fine all except the broken link thing. It could be my isp is having problems.Thanks for letting me know that it was probably something on your end.Peace, FoM! [ Post Comment ] Comment #8 posted by kaptinemo on October 02, 2000 at 13:58:23 PT: Mea culpa, FoM (My fault, FoM) I goofed with the .html tags. This is the proper link for this one:http://www.freedomdomain.com/bankrupt.html [ Post Comment ] Comment #7 posted by FoM on October 02, 2000 at 11:10:13 PT Hi kapt Hi kapt, I have been having a few broken links myself so I emailed this thread to Matt. I have the problem off here to so I'm not sure. [ Post Comment ] Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on October 02, 2000 at 10:57:39 PT: Sorry, these should work THE MISSING 13th AMENDMENT:http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/10/missing13th.htmSTATES of EMERGENCY:http://www.freedomdomain.com/bankrupt.htmEMERGENCY POWERS ACTS:http://rallye-pointe.com/em_powers.htm [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on October 02, 2000 at 10:53:53 PT: Serfs Everybody here knows about the laws underpinning cannabis prohibition. I don't have to go over them. But think back to a time when you *didn't* know of the laws, or their origins. Remember how incredulous you were when you learned the truth? How outraged you were that a bunch of racist bigots could put one over on the whole country? And that the entire basis for the law was little more than institutionalized Jim Crowe racism with a dash of corporate dealings-with-the-Devil thrown in for leavening? Well, friends, there are lots of *other* laws, that, despite your ignorance of them, run - and ruin - your lives. Laws that most people haven't the foggiest idea even exist - and would be just as incredulous to learn of how such hidden laws control them, and how they came to be.Laws that reduce you to the serfdom that Observer alludes to. Laws that laid the ground work, the foundation, which has enabled the Supremes to do what they have done. Why the measure brought to the Supremes to halt the Oakland cannabis Club from distributing its' medicine was couched as an 'emergency measure'. And why I am not so sanguine for the future of cannabis re-legalization if it depends upon the sagacity of the Nine Old Frellers. For those of you who might be scratching your heads at Observer's application of this word to putatively free people, I invite the truly curious and knowledge-hungry to peruse the following links:THE MISSING 13th AMENDMENT:http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/10/missing13th.htmlSTATES of EMERGENCY:http://www.freedomdomain.com/bankrupt.htmlEMERGENCY POWERS ACTS:http://rallye-pointe.com/em_powers.htmlAnd especially this one. I *certainly don't* subscribe to their Fundamentalist viewpoint, but the basic facts of the matter are indisputable:A SPECIAL REPORT ON THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY IN THE UNITED STATES:http://www.nidlink.com/~bobhard/srwep.html I await your comments. [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by Ethan Russo, MD on October 02, 2000 at 10:42:33 PT: Perhaps we need some Northern Exposure In the immortal words of the Byrds:I heading for the nearest foreign border, Vancouver just may be my kind of town! [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by Lehder on October 02, 2000 at 10:03:37 PT Quote of the Day from "Making Sense of Tyranny", Simon Tormey, Manchester University Press, 1995"As we saw in the last chapter, for Havel the novelty of totalitarianism is that it makes terror humdrum, part of the normal life of each individual. The appearance of consensus and stability is thus not a sign of the success of the regime in transforming the character of the population. It is simply a sign of its convincing people that it pays to perform the rituals expected of them. Terror in these systems is thus not open and overt for the reason that it does not need to be. Much more effective is the slow yet relentless build-up of pressure on the individual to make him or her conform....This is the terror experienced when people know that they are completely defenceless against the state. It is the terror that comes from knowing that at any moment everything might be lost, house, job, privileges, family....Far from representing some entirely new form of despotism totalitarian systems are just like every other tyranny that has ever existed: they crave absolute power over their subjects and yet find the road to the attainment of that power blocked by the realities of human life. What is distinctive about totalitarian regines, however, is their total unwillingness to recognise any such limits or barriers to the achievement of total power. The regime thus carries on attempting to achieve the impossible, holding back reality like Canute holding back the waves, shedding the blood of all those who stand in its way."...."Perhaps the key idea that comes across in the work of such theorests is that totalitarianism is not so much the product of any specific ideology as of a specific desire. This is the desire to impose or reinforce a 'correct' view of the world, of what is and what must be. Totalitarianism as they see it is born of certainty, of the knowledge a movement, a party or a group has that it has access to the truth and hence that all other versions of reality are deficient. Totalitarianism is thus born from the desire to impose this version of the truth on a given population. It is this act of imposition that accounts for the character of totalitarian rule. Totalitarianism is a sort of evangelism taken to its logical extreme; it is the desire to have everyone everywhere recognise the same truth. This is the real source of the energy of the groups and movements that emerge to defend it. They think they have access to the secret of human happiness and they want to 'share' this secret with everyone else. Thus what is important is not that these movements share the same vision of perfection, only that they possess a vision. It is for this reason that totalitarian movements are relentlessly intolerant of other groups and views. They simply cannot tolerate the existence of other movements proclaiming other truths and other conceptions of how social life should be ordered. It is also for this reason that when they come to power intolerance is regarded as a virtue and a guide to state policy. Totalitarian governments are not therefore just content with banning other groups and movements; they hunt them down and attempt to eliminate the possibility of their emergence. It is also for this reason that totalitarian states are loathe to recognise the distinction between the public and the private realms of human activity, between an area of legitimate social concern and the space for private thought and action. Individuals cannot be trusted to arrive at the truth by themselves, and so like Winston Smith they must constantly be cajoled and persuaded to abandon their privacy and join the herd. Totalitarianism thus represents the denial of individual autonomy and hence the denial of politics, of a realm of moral and ethical contestation. Totalitarian systems make politics superfluous because the general recognition of the right to ask questions, to pose difficulties and to challenge orthodoxies has been denied. Since all the answers to all the questions people might want to ask are to be found in the ideology, in the sacred texts, or in the words of the leader or some other prophet, discussion, debate, and deliberation are superfluous." [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by observer on October 02, 2000 at 09:35:50 PT Predictions... • Handcuffing and arresting Texas mother Gail Atwater for a seat-belt violation punishable by a maximum $50 fine, leaving her 4-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter in the care of a passer-by. Prediction: Supremes will rule that's ok, because Law Enforcement Officers, being sovereign, need to take extra precautions "these days" because after all, the woman could "be on PCP" and for "Officer Saftey" it is sometimes necessary to give Officers extra latitude. • Using high-tech military "thermal imaging" devices to detect a home marijuana farm cultivated under hot lights.Prediction: Supremes will rule that's ok, because the "scourage" of "drugs" and the "menace" of "marijuana" which treatens "our children" is overrules little things like the Bill of Rights. • Giving police a city hospital's warrantless urinalyses of pregnant women who test positive for cocaine, under a law intended to protect fetal development. Prediction: Supremes will rule that's ok, because the protection of "the children" from the "plague" of "substance abuse" and besides, CPS gets an extra ten grand for each such child taken from their mothers (for the social workers) to "help". The "crisis" of "drugs" requires us to "get tough." • Letting police dogs sniff for narcotics around cars stopped for document checks at Indianapolis roadblocks.Prediction: Supremes will rule that's ok, because the founders didn't have cars. Some founders did have slaves, however, and since arbitrary freedom (for the sovereign government Official, that is) over slaves is important in the control of slaves, then, short of terminal property damage (i.e. the Officer actually killing the subject, which requires a hearing to clear the Officer), any treatment of subject/serfs by sovereign is acceptable. • Police refusing to let an Illinois man enter his trailer home in an effort to prevent him from tampering with possible evidence inside before officers could obtain a search warrant. Prediction: Supremes will rule that's ok, because the "crisis" of "drugs", sometimes requires the suspension of a few civil liberties. Slave quarters don't belong to the slave of course, the slave quarters belong to master. Master may do has he pleases with the slaves.. . .Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.-- Ben Franklin [ Post Comment ] Post Comment Name: Optional Password: E-Mail: Subject: Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message] Link URL: Link Title: