DID YOU KNOW THAT DHS COULD IGNORE THE 4^TH AMENDMENT

 

This post should serve as a serious warning to liberals who look the other way as the administration re-writes the Constitution whenever it wants. I remember all the media consternation relative to potential Constitutional rights violations when the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act were passed during the Bush years. Where is all the outrage now that the darkest of their predictions about the laws are actually happening? The Department of Homeland Security has defined its border search 4^th amendment exemption to extend 100 miles inland from the borders and to include a similar radius around functional equivalents of the border. Let me make that crystal clear to everyone. The area that they claim to have no 4^th amendment restriction in covers the private homes of 197 million citizens and that is before we get clarification on what they mean by “border or its functional equivalent.” There are now numerous cases of the FBI contacting the DHS when they want to conduct a warrantless search without probable cause and Homeland Security has obliged. If as the DHS claims, all international airports are the functional equivalent of a border then the entire nation is now a Constitution free zone. When the DHS was asked to justify the constitutionality of the warrantless searches they responded by saying, “We conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits.” Now that they have introduced the concept of “border or its functional equivalent” we can only conclude that the agency or any other agency they deem fit to include can search any electronic device without a warrant even if it is in your home. The creeping destruction of our Constitutional rights in the name of national security is astonishing. Three years after a complaint was filed about the illegal searches the DHS responded in a memo saying, “we will do as we please like it or not.”

The concept of a Constitution-free zone covering most of the country was challenged in a law suit brought by the ACLU in 2008. The court stopped short of forbidding the random DHS check points and the CRS stated in part, “Agents who perform a search outside direct border stops must show reasonable suspicion putting their actions closer to the scope of the 4^th amendment.” I want you to know that that makes me feel so much better. We can find solace in the fact that the courts are willing to let the agency make up their own rules as they go in light of the internal investigation they did that found all of their actions to be constitutional.

Over the weekend at the Bundy ranch the BLM felt confident in their right to confine citizens to First Amendment zones that the BLM defined the limits of. The EPA regularly violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment by compelling owners of private property to vacate use of said property without compensation. Hell, your doctor can ask you questions courtesy of the Affordable Care Act and if, in his opinion, your answer is not appropriate he can suspend your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I am warning the liberal readers again, your ox will be gored by this lawlessness soon enough and it will be too late to stop it. The absolute Constitutional prohibition against conscription of the National Guard for foreign wars has been violated by every President since FDR including your favorite, Richard Nixon. That particular provision of the Constitution has been trampled on so many time that we don’t even notice any more. We have a President and Attorney General that violate their oaths of office every time they elect not to enforce existing laws they disagree with and then have the temerity to demand we comply with The ACA because it is the law of the land. I don't have the space here to go into Tenth Amendment violations.