On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Bill Stewart wrote:
I'm not sure which of the >s are Petro, Schliesser, Measl, or others,
These are not me (Measl), nor Schilesser, so that only leaves Petro :-) Thank you Bill, for a much clearer statement of what I was *trying* to impart. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysdmin@mfn.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------
We still live in a country that has laws, and we *should* expect the LEAs to enforce all laws that are on the books.
I think this was Petro, who I think was a Marine, and therefore should know better. The Uniform Code of Military Justice *requires* soldiers to refuse to obey illegal orders. Police generally are required to uphold the Constitution, and no amount of weaseling about "I'm not the departmental legal counsel, I'm the guy with the blue suit" relieves them of that responsibility. There are substantial differences between these two situations - usually an illegal order to a soldier involves shooting people, while an unconstitutional action by a cop involves arresting people or serving warrants on them, which can be argued about later, so it's far more critical that a soldier individually do the right thing, even though an inappropriate refusal by a soldier can result in lots of dead people, while an incorrect refusal or inaction by a cop only results in somebody not getting arrested or the city's insurance company paying a bunch of lawyers for a lawsuit.
If you have a problem with the laws, it's not the LEAs fault, it's the legislature and the Executive branch.
It's both. And enforcement of laws typically has a huge latitude - the DMCA doesn't say anything about refusing to give Dmitri a bail hearing, or whether to take every piece of electronics in a "hacker's" house. The "I know it when I see it" test for obscenity is very broad. And the property-forfeiture-for-drugs laws may allow police to steal anything nailed down or not if they think they can make a case that there might have been drugs around that the victim won't have the resources to successfully defend against, but don't require it, and enforcement seems suspiciously correlated with which police departments make a profit from doing it.
In the grand scheme of things, Ashcroft believes (or appears to) in the Constitution. He may have some differences of opinion with many or most on this list, but he believes in it. That is better than we've had in at least 6 years, probably more.
Certainly Janet Reno and Louis Freeh were a bad lot and we're well rid of them, but Ashcroft's belief in the Constitution certainly appears not to include the First Amendment. We'll see how much he likes the others as he goes along.
My point, which I obviously did not make clearly enough, is that Ashcroft appears, unlike at least his immediate predecessor, to believe in rule of law, rather than rule by force.
Another point you bring up is that a LEO should not enforce laws that "clearly" violate the constitution.
A LEO cannot do that *and still be a LEO*. He can refuse by resigning, but if he simply takes the position that he will only enforce laws he thinks are constitutional he causes a violation of one of the fundamental underpinnings of the constitution, that all people are equal under the law, and that the law is supposed to be equally applied.
I strongly disagree. Let's start with a terminology rant - Cops used to call themselves "peace officers". Sure, it was propaganda, but the point is that they're there to "serve and protect" (at least for the upper classes.) Or they claimed they were in the "Justice" business. Now they're calling themselves "Law Enforcement", trying to use the culture's leftover respect for "law" as a protection of individual rights, rather than its current meaning of "whatever the legislature writes", whether that's special-interest support like the DMCA or religious/cultural preferences like the laws against some drugs, and trying to use this to justify the use of however much force it takes to force people to obey. No different from what an invading army does.
If a cop believes that a law is unconstitutional or unjust, then if anything his job is not to resign and let someone else enforce it, but to prevent its enforcement, at least through inaction if not through active reorganization of the police force. If equal application of the law has a part to play here, it's in getting other cops NOT to impose injustice, not in copping out by imposing injustice himself or quitting.
That may be less than clear, let me try it another way:
It was clear, just wrong - but go ahead :-)
One of the fundamental features of a society that is built around the concept of "rule of law" is that the law is knowable by the people, and that they have a reasonable expectation of the consequences should they break that law. When you have a situation where you give carte blanche to LEOs to decide for themselves what is constitutional, you violate that. What one LEO may decide is perfectly constitutional, another may believe is unconstitutional resulting in even more uneven application of the law than we have today.
[Example 1 - people don't know if they'll be pulled over by Good Cop or Bad Cop, especially near town border.] [Example 2 - Good Sheriff replaced by Officer Hardass. ]
It's still wrong to enforce unjust laws, and also to enforce unconstitutional ones. If a law's on the books, the citizens have to decide individually whether to obey them. The examples given involved concealed handguns and searches for same - if police are doing unconstitutional searches, there are problems anyway. Problems with differing laws at borders are difficult anyway, but having a location where laws are enforced less strictly is certainly no risk for the neighbors, and we've already got enough laws that you're probably violating some of them without even realizing it.
A friend of mine has a button that says "if the public were required to *know* all the laws, and not merely to obey them, there'd be a revolution tomorrow"....
-- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they should give serious consideration towards setting a better example: Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate... This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers, associates, or others. Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the first place... --------------------------------------------------------------------