-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Mon, 17 Feb 1997, Jeremiah A Blatz wrote:

You neglect things like the interstate commerce provision, which means that if it crosses state lines, the feds can regualte it. In addition, the court (in its infinite wisdom), decided that "the people" meant the states, then the people. So, as long as it isn't meantioned in the constitution, the states can do whatever they want.

The 10th amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." This sounds pretty clear to me. Theoretically, the states can do whatever they want as long as they don't infringe on the rights of the people. The 9th amendment protects all rights not explicitly stated in the constitution. The 5th and 14th amendments both protect people from losing life, liberty, or property without due process. I believe that the 14th was used as justification for Roe vs. Wade, since the court decided that abortion is a liberty and any law forbidding it deprives a woman of liberty without due process. Of course, in practice, we know that the situation is much different... Mark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMwkjwSzIPc7jvyFpAQE9QwgAj+op9T6AT858eS89RyAiYnwP02APgr3I 1ZkguMV5JiJWOKrhXu54/k7sVam4sxCftvC3Poon9K4yCQ+rtTUL3bF81+ppdXMr cCfEMU5RNZVDU5sddR5nWkOHagXFatSYK6v7IUqYfquWgq1/9m6NQIO25+RleHmv nz9ZjaeWdljPx0SWjg77Ul8/8fJkNn/sHn3rTBUdNeGBLkipAY82vv4hZFC2A8uf zAjbD+GEYl4Vbu+GpOPkb+RDkECZ762zVQ2DX4yHeGq58Ejs/a4+XHXT6MqYs8Xy phnluL347m/OrDCPekCT4nOgt0zHGoDQ8PYinxbDUjxLHC7rOzKe9g== =5iIy -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Mr. may wrote:

At 1:22 PM -0600 2/17/97, snow wrote:

...

My rights are WHATEVER ISN'T IN THE CONSTITUTION, and the government can only, ONLY do what the constitution says it can. But why do you not object that the "right to free speech," "the right to keep and bear arms," and so on, are specifically enumeratedin the Bill of Rights? The privacy issue is that there is no such enumeration of a right to privacy in the Bill of Rights, though many think it to be implicit in some of the other enumerated rights, e.g,, the Fourth, and even in the First.

Amendment X- (1791) The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. As far as my reading goes, the Constitution (of which the BoR is a portion, IIR my "civics" (more like uncivics) classes properly) doesn't give the Feds the right to invade my privacy, and although not _explicit_, Also: Amendment IX -(1791) The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Seems to indicate that even if it isn't listed, we should still have it. Then: Amendment IV- (1791) 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. Seems (to me, and IANAL) indicate that there is (at least in the minds of the writers) a distinction between _public_ information which is fair game, and public information, which is only fair game if there is enough public information to justify crossing that line.

Constitutional issues are not easily discussed in short messages like this. Suffice it to say the issue of whether a "right to privacy" exists has been long discussed, most recently by Bork, Posner, and others (I skimmed the latest Posner book a while back, and liked his style).

There is a big question in my mind whether things are so complicated that we need lawyers, or they are so complicated because we have lawyers. It seems to me that the constitution is written rather simply, at least prior to the 14th amendment. Congress Shall Make No Law... where is the confusion? It is the fact that some people "know best" what is good for others, and wish to enforce this "knowlege" upon the rest of us. God save me from your over zelous followers.

The issue hit when abortion advocates argued that a "woman's right to privacy" allowed abortions. However, none of the enumerated rights made this obvious. Bork has opined that no right to privacy can be inferred from the Constitution.

(And I always thought the "woman's right to privacy" argument for abortion was flaky. Accepting such an argument, wouldn't infanticide be equally protected by a woman's right to privacy?)

Or a man's.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- on or about 970219:0722 Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net> said: +Simple, but.... In a right to jury trial of peers, are the peers the +peers of the defendant or the peers of the victim? Both the Rodney +King officers and the O.J. cases were perfect examples of how, when you +switch the peer groups, you reverse the decisions. you trying to be some kind of trouble maker? please remember that *all* the fairweather dogooder liberals have been telling us for years that everyone is equal. yeah, right! therefore, juries are obviously color blind, and not dazzled by attorneys calling up racism. yeah, right! as to Powell, he is/was an animal who should have been put away permanently. Koon was an officer's officer (personal experience) and was in the wrong place at the wrong time, not willing to step in. Koon lost 24 years of service without a mark, his pension, and all his benefits with 5 or 6 kids at home --and they had to go into hiding until found by the liberal press again and again who obviously felt the family should be punished as well. we wont even bother with the issues of double jeopardy when they pull a federal civil rights trial on all of them after the state court cleared everyone except Powell who they hung on. they had a clear right to try Powell, noone else. and the video played for evidence missed the first 90 seconds when a very large animal (Rodney King can be described no other way) came out of the car, dancing the jig, and went after Powell. by the time the prosecutors, particularly the Feds, were through itimidating the witnesses, nobody told the truth. Rodney King had been busted for public intoxication, controlled substances, and disorder enough times that he was well recognized for what he was --and easily identified. in the spooks, we called Powell's actions "the red mask" --once you start staring the beast in the eye, you are so wired on there is no stopping until your opponent is jello. 'shocktroops' or 'Stossentruppen' should never be used in civilian police forces, except possibily on SWAT teams, not an average street cop. and why did we have the trial in the first place? simply because the LA Times and KABC decided there was going to be a trial. I dont know whether to chalk it off to their bleeding heart liberals, or just the usual greed for money to be made on high profile news. or is it just more of the usual politically correct beat down of the oppressive whiteface? it is sometimes difficult to defend the LA Police department when you knew Daryll Gates and his predecessor, "Big Ed" Davis. Both of them are cowboys; Big Ed is now a state senator from the far west Valley, what was horse country when I lived there. they had a job to do, and LA is a mean place. the city itself is 2/3 poverty, half of that extreme ghetto and barrio problems. Big Ed is the man who proposed the fitting ending to airline hijackings, and set up his display in plain sight: in front of the American Airlines terminal building 4 at LAX before LAX was double decked. Big Ed parked a 40 ft flat bed trailer out there with a judge's bench at one end and a gallows at the other end with the jury box and dock in between. yes, sir, justice by the hijackers' peers; take the next 12 citizens coming out the doors. perfect and swift justice on someone who has no defense for his actions. everything else falls under this short take by a prominent author discussing the problem with jury selection: "The men who murdered Virginia's [Nevada] original twenty-six cemetary occupants were never punished. Why? Because Alfred the Great, when he invented trial by jury, and knew that he had admirably framed it to secure justice in his age of the world, was not aware that in the nineteenth century the condition of things would be so entirely changed that unless he rose from the grave and altered the jury plan to meet the emergency, it would prove the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that human wisdom could contrive. For how could he imagine that we simpletons would go on using his jury plan after circumstances had stripped it of its usefulness, any more than he could imagine that we would go not using his candle clock after we had invented chronometers? In his day news could not travel fast, and hence he could easily find a jury of honest, intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were called to try - but in our day of telegraph and newspapers his plan compels us to swear in juries composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidly excludes honest men and men of brains. "I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, which we call a jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B, a good citizen, in the most wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and all men capable of reading read about it. And of course all men not deaf and dumb and idiotic talked about it. A jury list was made out, and Mr. B. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned precisely as he would have been questioned in any court in America: "`Have you heard of this homicide?' "`Yes.' "`Have you held conversations on the subject?' "`Yes.' "`Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?' "`Yes.' "`Have you read newspaper accounts of it?' "`Yes.' "`We do not want you.' "A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant of high character and known probity; a mining superintendent of intelligence and unblemished reputation; a quartz-mill owner of excellent standing, were all questioned in the same way, and all set aside. Each said the public talk and the newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but that sworn testimony would overthrow his previously formed opinions and enable him to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with the facts. But of course such men could not be trusted with the case. Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice. "When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men was empaneled - a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked about, nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle in the corrals, the Indians in the sagebrush, and the stones in the streets were cognizant of! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes, two low beerhouse politicians, three barkeepers, two ranchers who could not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came out afterward that one of these latter thought that incest and arson were the same thing. "The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one expect? "The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity, and perjury. It is a shame that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing, intelligence, and probity swears that the testimony given under solemn oath will outweigh, with him, street talk and newspaper reports based on mere hearsay, he is worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own ignorance and stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands than theirs. Why could not the jury law be so altered as to give men of brains and honesty an equal chance with fools and miscreants? Is it right to show the present favoritism to one class of men and inflict a disability on another, in a land whose boast is that all its citizens are free and equal? I am a candidate for the legislature. I desire to tamper with the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated - every effort I make to save the country `misses fire.'" --From "Roughing It" by Mark Twain, Chapter XLVIII. _____________________________________________________________________ "Explain to me, slowly and carefully, why if person A, when screwed over on a deal by B; is morally obligated to consult, pay, and defer to, person C for the purpose of seeing justice done; and why person C has any legitimate gripe, if A just hauls off and smacks B around like a dead carp." ___________________________________________________________attila_____ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. 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Attila T. Hun wrote:

on or about 970219:0722 Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net> said: +Simple, but.... In a right to jury trial of peers, are the peers the +peers of the defendant or the peers of the victim? Both the Rodney +King officers and the O.J. cases were perfect examples of how, when you +switch the peer groups, you reverse the decisions.

you trying to be some kind of trouble maker? please remember that *all* the fairweather dogooder liberals have been telling us for years that everyone is equal. yeah, right! therefore, juries are obviously color blind, and not dazzled by attorneys calling up racism. yeah, right!

It just makes me a little nervous to see jurors getting so personally involved that they come out of the box with a clenched fist as a (I suppose) victory salute. I didn't care to watch the charade in Santa Monica recently, but I doubt it was much better.

as to Powell, he is/was an animal who should have been put away permanently.

I watched most of the first trial live in '92, since I wasn't working that year. My impressions at the time went along with the presentation, which was fair to the officers. It was stated by Koon and one of the other officers as much as a year later, when many cities across the U.S. had been using the King video for training for several months to a year, "The LAPD has not to this date provided their officers with new tools and techniques to handle this kind of situation without a repeat of the same" (quote approximate). Of course, if you're willing to consider an alternative scenario, one which would appeal primarily to "conspiracy buffs" and the like, you might recall that L.A. was getting ready to put in a new freeway from the airport across the very line where the most fires were (6,000-plus fires, so extensive that the big jets couldn't fly over to LAX), and I think the outcome was to save them a lot of work, a windfall as it were.

Koon was an officer's officer (personal experience) and was in the wrong place at the wrong time, not willing to step in. Koon lost 24 years of service without a mark, his pension, and all his benefits with 5 or 6 kids at home --and they had to go into hiding until found by the liberal press again and again who obviously felt the family should be punished as well. we wont even bother with the issues of double jeopardy when they pull a federal civil rights trial on all of them after the state court cleared everyone except Powell who they hung on. they had a clear right to try Powell, noone else.

It's good if you don't read the L.A. Times. One of their lead editor- ializers (whores), a professor at USC law school named Erwin Chemerinsky, writes in relation to this subject "The federal government is an inde- pendent sovereign that cannot have its powers diminished by a state government's actions." (exact quote, 2/7/97). Either that's a load of BS doubletalk, or it's one of the more fascistic commentaries from the Times, which is usually bad enough. BTW, the Times printed a large picture (first time I've ever seen) of the chairman, someone named Schlossberg, and I think it's spelled slightly different than the one who married Caroline Kennedy. Anyway, this guy could be Michael Eisner's twin brother. Two bozos if I ever saw 'em, goofy-looking dudes, which would explain much about their newspaper editorial policy.

and the video played for evidence missed the first 90 seconds when a very large animal (Rodney King can be described no other way) came out of the car, dancing the jig, and went after Powell. by the time the prosecutors, particularly the Feds, were through itimidating the witnesses, nobody told the truth.

The suppression of evidence that worked in the police officers' 2nd trial has apparently become the precedent for a whole lot of trials. The feds are sweating hard on this OKC bombing thing - latest is that the initial witnesses seeing McVeigh here or there have admitted to contradictory descriptions they've given before. Note that there was some jury tampering (IMO, and others too) in the grand jury proceeding in OKC; also note the flimsy excuse for throwing out the grand jury in the Simpson case, since they weren't going to indict Simpson. I didn't even read close on the De La Beckwith case, where the feds finally nailed him after 20-plus years of trying, but maybe there's something on the internet....

Rodney King had been busted for public intoxication, controlled substances, and disorder enough times that he was well recognized for what he was --and easily identified.

Let anyone say whatever they want to about cops, but I'm glad it's not me out there facing 220-lb guys on dust. I heard first hand from one who shot a guy twice, and he just kept coming. If a .38 won't stop 'em, maybe that's where the big dogs come in handy. It would've been interesting if the King video had a minute or so with a couple of K-9's...

in the spooks, we called Powell's actions "the red mask" --once you start staring the beast in the eye, you are so wired on there is no stopping until your opponent is jello. 'shocktroops' or 'Stossentruppen' should never be used in civilian police forces, except possibily on SWAT teams, not an average street cop.

When I went into the Army for combat training, I stood 5-10 and weighed 120 lbs. I weighed 130 when I came out. I guess I could have gone on patrol looking for Charlie, and maybe kept alive, if I didn't have to take on some well-fed crazies whose lives were turning to shit because of their enormous stupidity. In any case, I couldn't go out on the street in L.A. and face guys like King, so I lean toward the cops as much as I can. BTW (and speaking of stupidity), the Christopher Commission named 44 or 45 cops out of the LAPD's 8,000-plus as problem officers, and two(!) of the 45 went to the Simpson home the night/morning of the murders.

and why did we have the trial in the first place? simply because the LA Times and KABC decided there was going to be a trial. I dont know whether to chalk it off to their bleeding heart liberals, or just the usual greed for money to be made on high profile news. or is it just more of the usual politically correct beat down of the oppressive whiteface?

Big Money, Big Fame, Big Fortune. Look at Dan Rather, Robert McNeil, Bill Moyers, and others who profited handsomely from their on-the- scene experience in the JFK killing. Remember Netanyahu, who spent all those hours on the telly during the Gulf War, playing the role of the ultra-conservative Israeli leader who could step right in and take command in a crisis? Well, he did, and have you seen any recent pictures of him? Even when he's with Yessir Yurafart, he's beaming broadly, like the cat that just ate the canary. Big, big money.

it is sometimes difficult to defend the LA Police department when you knew Daryll Gates and his predecessor, "Big Ed" Davis. Both of them are cowboys; Big Ed is now a state senator from the far west Valley, what was horse country when I lived there. they had a job to do, and LA is a mean place. the city itself is 2/3 poverty, half of that extreme ghetto and barrio problems. Big Ed is the man who proposed the fitting ending to airline hijackings, and set up his display in plain sight: in front of the American Airlines terminal building 4 at LAX before LAX was double decked. Big Ed parked a 40 ft flat bed trailer out there with a judge's bench at one end and a gallows at the other end with the jury box and dock in between. yes, sir, justice by the hijackers' peers; take the next 12 citizens coming out the doors. perfect and swift justice on someone who has no defense for his actions.

[heh heh] The people of L.A. really liked Gates, because he kept the peace. And they liked (Uncle) Tom Bradley just as well, since he kept the city really clean. No trash on the streets, no dirt, all the beautiful shrubs lining the freeways well-watered - you ought to see Hollywood since they started putting in the "subway" under Mayor Riordan. Anyone with any sense of pride at all would be aghast at what's happened. Streets caving in, wooden planks covering big holes on lots of streets that you have to drive over, it's a mess. Even a lot of the old stars on the Walk of Fame were badly damaged. Riordan must be a Communist, or Mafia or something. Funny that when he ran for mayor, his huge billboards all over town had his name in big letters, and the next-to-last letter (a) was replaced with a large red star, looking exactly like the ones they used under Mao. [remainder snipped]

Greg Broiles wrote:

At 11:56 PM 2/19/97 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote:

...

It's good if you don't read the L.A. Times. One of their lead editor- ializers (whores), a professor at USC law school named Erwin Chemerinsky, writes in relation to this subject "The federal government is an inde- pendent sovereign that cannot have its powers diminished by a state government's actions." (exact quote, 2/7/97). Either that's a load of BS doubletalk, or it's one of the more fascistic commentaries from the Times, which is usually bad enough.

Hey, don't forget to shoot the messenger. Chemerinsky's statement is a concise summary of at least the last 70 years of double jeopardy jurisprudence. The only thing that's unusual about the use of the "dual sovereign" doctrine against the cops who beat King was that it's usually used against ordinary citizens, not cops. Do you suppose it's possible that some of the other evil conspiracies you see lurking behind every bush are also just reflections of your own fears and misunderstanding?

My background is not so much in conspiracy as it is in rational problem solving. Conspiracy is yet another model/filter with which to evaluate events, sometimes useful unless a person automatically rejects all of that and subscribes to the Elmer Fudd view of history. I understood clearly the (supposed) intent of the feds in retrying the Whites in the South who were beating up on Blacks and getting off with White juries - I just believe they would have served the people better by declaring mistrials or something instead of using the "dual sovereignty" BS, since a study of the Constitution and its preparatory papers shows the fathers clearly would have balked at this. One or more of the top feds also commented on the possibility of retrying Simpson in another criminal case, saying it was not possible under current law since it didn't have the same aspects as the Rodney King cops trials. However, that doesn't take anything away from the fact of a "democracy" run amok, in the hands of bozos like Michael Eisner and what's-his-schmuck at the L.A. Times, who are constantly beating the drums for revenge, so that the people will find "some way, somehow" to lynch people like Simpson, to "make him pay" for what he "so obviously" did to his victims.