I look forward to watching Republicans and right-wing bloggers, after close to 8 years holding the lube while Bush and company give it to the Constitution right and proper, re-discover the grand old document:
Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms.
more stories like thisThe program, which is already raising questions about civil liberties, is based on the premise that parents are so fearful of gun violence and the possibility that their own teenagers will be caught up in it that they will turn to police for help, even in their own households.
Let’s see what Don Surber has to say:
Constitution? What’s that?
After watching him excuse this administration for the past 6 years, I am not sure if he is joking. Now quick- everyone smear Ron Paul. He’s CRAZY!
*** Update ***
It’s genuinely hard to believe that the writers of George Bush’s speech last night to the Federalist Society weren’t knowingly satirizing him.
Read the whole thing, and you might realize why Surber doesn’t know what the Constitution is- Bush shredded it.
Robert Johnston
Given the judges that “conservatives’ have worked so hard to place throughout the judiciary over the last quarter century, this will almost certainly pass muster with the courts, as “voluntary” permission for a search is, at this point, enough to justify almost any search, no matter how involuntary that permission may actually be. Unless, of course, some bizarre interpretation of the Second Amendment comes to the rescue.
Dug Jay
He’s not really crazy in the traditional sense of that word’s meaning. But he likely is crazy in the sense that John Cole is clearly certifiable.
ThymeZone
Don Surber might not be the dumbest person on the tubes, but I’m sure he fills in when the Number One guy is on vacation.
jake
Strange. Surely they know that “High crime neighborhood” is super secret code for “Lots of poor brown people,” so why would anyone on the right care? And of course there’s always “If you haven’t done anything wrong, braaaaawk!”
I find it hard to believe any of that lot has the foresight to think random searches for thee might mean the same for me.
Oh wait, I see how this one goes:
I get it. This is really the Democrats fault. GOP, Party of Lincoln, Mooo. Will we see hordes of concerned Righties flocking to defend the people of Boston?
And if you think the answer is yes, would you like to buy a bridge?
cleek
if it wasn’t for the gun angle, they wouldn’t give a shit
RSA
Here’s the funny thing: Imagine if the story were this:
Would we hear a peep? Somehow I doubt it.
Dreggas
Ok that’s it time to join a freaking militia.
Dug Jay
John Cole, ThymeZone, et. al., perhaps you should go back and carefully read Surber’s post. He very clearly is not supportive of what the Boston police are trying to do.
Delia
I hope you guys know you’re all on the Bush League high treason list and I’m currently weighing my chances of getting off it by emailing the NSA with your screen names.
John Cole
No shit! Really!
Hows ’bout you read this post again. Get back to me.
John Cole
WTF- I don’t even play bridge.
Bill Arnold
See nice doggie for a distilled (as in 190 proof) wingnut reaction. Liberals blamed.
Dug Jay
I read your post again, and if “irony” was your goal, you failed miserably.
r€nato
sock puppet! bwak bwak bwak!
I’m sorry, the correct answer for situations like these is, “Thanks, Captain Obvious!”
r€nato
yeah, I liked how Surber called “Sadly, No!” the left-wing counterpart to “Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler”.
That’s like calling George Carlin the left-wing counterpart to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
jake
This is based on the assumption that Bush’s speech writers are any more honest than their employer.
It’s all down to making stirring speeches and pithy sound bites so the 100 monkeys assigned to bash out his authorized biography have something to work with.
The Other Steve
I think Cole’s point was if the Boston Police were asking ot search for drugs, or dirty pictures… Surber would be fine with it.
r€nato
maybe, and maybe your “irony” detector is broken, since what John was writing is not irony.
‘Irony’ is the speech Bush gave, from which Greenwald quoted – the absurd juxtaposition of a unitary-theory-pushing Constitution-shredder proclaiming the virtues of our three branches of government and the document’s protections against tyranny.
I got it. Everyone else seems to have gotten it. You didn’t. Obviously, the problem is with everyone else.
jake
Dude, what the fuck was that?
Policegunswelfarekidsliberalsutopiadrugsbaaahacluevilecluckcluck!1!11
Maybe his fucking dog does write that shit.
r€nato
Terry Gross once interviewed former Chimpy speechwriter David Frum on Fresh Air. She asked him about Bush’s SOTU 2003 speech and generally how he might feel about the gaping chasm between Bush’s speeches and reality, citing several examples of the high-flying rhetoric which Frum wrote and the depressing reality of what Bush and his policies have actually wrought (e.g., Bush’s many speeches about spreading ‘freedom and democracy’ versus the US’ continued support for tyrants like Belarus’ Lukashenko).
Frum’s reply? A huge ‘meh’. Basically, he writes the speeches, other people do policy, wasn’t his job to reconcile the two.
r€nato
just another glimpse inside a diseased mind. Yeah, ‘S,N!’ is exactly like Mischa, only left-wing.
Uh-huh.
ThymeZone
My opinion, as stated above, is not based on this item. It’s based on a year of talking to Surber right here on these pages.
The man has a brain the size of a walnut.
r€nato
sorry, when I cited Lukashenko and Belarus, I meant Uzbekistan and Karimov. Don’t ask me why but I mix those two up. AFAIK, the Bush administration has been more critical of Belarus’ human rights rechord than that of Uzbekistan.
r€nato
record not rechord. Jesus. You people have no idea how often my fingers mix up homynyms. It’s weird.
crw
Ron Paul may not be crazy, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent he’s not serious about governing. Reference his campaign’s inability to come up with a realistic plan for abolishing the income tax. They can’t even get their numbers to add up and resort to some handwaving. Sorry Ron, no sale.
Ron Paul is running a fine ideas campaign, and I’m grateful he’s out there questioning the Republican jingoistic/authoritarian consensus from within. But I don’t think he has a clue about steering the ship of state. His would go down as one of the weakest administrations ever. I suspect he’d make Carter look like a paragon of strong leadership in comparison. DO NOT WANT.
P.S. The Republicans rediscovery of the 4th amendment (the 2nd is the only one they’ve ever given a damn about in this century) may have something to do with the looming prospects of a Clinton restoration…
r€nato
oh, believe me, they’ll rediscover the evils of an overly powerful executive branch and the virtues of Constitutional rule on Jan. 20, 2009. Bet on it.
that’s pretty much a libertarian for ya. In that respect they are just like any other politician. Get elected, then worry about the stupid details.
What’s really sad is that the current GOP fiscal/economic policy is going to make Ron Paul look absolutely sane with his gold standard/ anti-Fed agitating. Fiat money has served us (and the rest of the world) just fine for many decades, until now that they have turned the almighty dollar into nearly the equivalent of a Weimar Republic deutschemark.
RSA
Please keep your late-night perversions to yourself.
fahs ibair
John, you have to work on your analogies. You used to be interested in intellectual honesty. Home invasion w/o a warrant does not equal waterboarding a captured and known terrorist.
GO TEAM GO!!!
Did anyone on this site notice that the whining and flailing about “shredding the constitution” over interrogation has been used only 3 times?
No need for a %100 batting average either. We do not need a ticking time bomb scenario. We dumped the water on KSM and he broke in no time. With good information that saved lives. Suprisingly, kidnappers and terrorists usually bounce around bit. Which means captured targets in a way are all ticking time bombs.
What? doesn’t fit the narrative? I can’t hear you LALALA-I-Am-A-LIB-LALALALAlalalala/cough
Welcome to your new team, Cole. Car Bombs prove you right and our soldiers success is an embarrassment.
Dennis-SGMM
Comes the (seemingly inevitable) election of a Democratic president and the Republicans and their cloud of wingnuts will all turn into Constitutional Scholars. The same zeal for interpretation that they currently apply to the Bible in order to prove that G*d is for or against whatever-it-is they are for or against will be applied to the Constitution.
Using the wrong fork at a Whitehouse dinner will be quickly “proven” to be grounds for impeachment.
TenguPhule
I can see how this threatens Wingnut bloggers who still live with their parents.
jcricket
Repeat after me, IOKIYAR.
See, it all makes sense now. It’s like a do-over, free-pass, get-of-jail-free and trump card all rolled into one.
I think Radley Balko’s about the only right-of-center blogger who can actually claim to consistently support civil liberties across the board, no matter who’s in charge.
Everyone else is a card-carrying member of the “9/11 changed everything, Brown People deserve it, What do you have to hide?” civil liberties, schmivel liberties crowd.
Does anyone remember the righties who were arguing, with a straight face, that Scooter Libby was innocent because they hadn’t proved the “underlying crime”. Some lawyers on the right where even arguing that. The idea that someone people believe Republicans are the “law and order” party is just beyond me. The “Stormtrooper and SWAT” party maybe.
Delia
And what happened to you? Did someone put depleted uranium in your Wheaties and it fried all the little neurological synapses in your brain cells? See, we were talking about this one topic, home invasion without a warrant, which is unconstitutional, and you seem to have jumped over all the little fried synapses to another topic, torture of prisoners, which is also unconstitutional, but is not the topic of this thread.
I know the brain damage makes it difficult. Maybe there’s some cable station that’s showing reruns of 24, since the new season didn’t make it on the air. You can watch till the rest of your brain is fried and then you won’t even want to post anymore.
empty
Not too far off subject. Libby at Newshoggers is highlighting the story of two professors, Ferrell a microbiologist and Kurtz, an artist, being prosecuted under the PATRIOT act – remember the one to be used against terrists. Go read it. Its scary.
Xenos
Wait until the next president comes in and replaces all the U.S.Attorneys. You will hear a screeching and a howling like nothing ever happened.
fahs ibair
Delia, help me out. What was Cole describing when he used the phrase “shredding the constitution”?
I will be back, the microwave just dinged, my malt-o-meal must be done.
TenguPhule
Shorter fahs ibair: I like to lie.
Torture is UnAmerican.
Torture is the method of the enemy.
Stop helping America’s enemies.
fahs ibair
Let it sink in. Waterboarding is not torture. Unpleasant, yes. Less than perfect? Absolutely.
How would you handle our situation? Promote Kucinich to Secretary of the Department of Peace?
You guys have a slam dunk this election year if you can wind in teh crazy. You have to admit there is an enemy, and it is not Bush.
Pick your battles if this is so important.
Tim F.
Jesus. I never thought I would see conservatives take every damn thing their government says as a given fact, and then use it as a club against other people standing for things like habeas corpus and no torture.
When I coined the term movementarians I really wasn’t kidding. When Pat Buchanan dies there won’t be any conservatives left.
jake
Fixed.
Mr. Sifter
cross posted at my homepage.
No one wants to protect civil liberties more then I. So, I was quite interested in the story, which I saw on Drudge titled “Boston police plan to Conduct warantless searches of homes.” Well, technically true, but misleading(a common feature of Drudge’s rewritten headlines). True, they are searching homes without a search warrant, but with permission of the homeowner. Some parents that are fearful that their kid(s) have a gun in the home hidden from them and are willing to allow the police to conduct the search.
Some have raised concerns that police will intimidate parents into allowing them to conduct a search and not explain to the parents the legal consequences of finding out that their kid illegally owns a gun. These are legitimate concerns, bu the mere potential of abuse doesn’t make otherwise legal activity illegal.
RSA
From The Washington Post:
Why else does George W. Bush refuse to say whether the U.S. government waterboards suspected terrorists? Obviously it’s not to avoid telling enemies about interrogation techniques; this stuff is in the daily papers. It’s because most people in the U.S. consider waterboarding a form of torture, and he’s unwilling to face this reality.
crw
*sigh*Agreed. I want to like libertarians, I really do. I agree in general with their socially liberal/fiscally conservative stance. But they have the same disease as the neocons: too impressed with their pet theories to allow little things like ‘evidence’ and ‘human nature’ intrude. And we’d be just as horrified with the results if we actually let them implement them.
cleek
umm
Tim F.
Aw, shit. Let’s say that I repurposed it.
Cinderella Ferret
This comes under the disguise of if they don’t have anything to hide then why should they mind if the police search the premises? Aren’t guilty people the only ones who need the 4th Amendment? The rest of the Bill of Rights are for us innocent folks. But the 4th? EVERYONE knows that’s for people with something to hide. The Boston program will become–mark my words–a program that is sooner, rather than later, abused. You can’t trust these fuckers to NOT cross the line. Warrants verify that the cops have done their homework and shown a judge they have probable cause for a search. I believe the conservative position, with apologies to Ronald Reagan, is trust but verify. That sound reasonable.
Call me paranoid but before any cop ever searches me or my abode they will have probable cause or a warrant. Period. I prefer to exercise ALL my legal rights. No warrant and I will exercise my right to defend my person, my family and my private property from criminals and jack-booted thugs alike.
Have we actually become a nation of cowards and sissies? Terrorists around every corner. Criminals hiding behind every bush. Jesus! Nanny and Daddy State recreants defer to the government for different reason, but both ultimately surrender liberty for safety. I don’t expect everyone to be John Wayne or take the law into their own hands, but somewhere along the way a set of cojones comes in handy. The government serves the people by providing reasonable public safety, but it can never guarantee something bad won’t happen. I refuse to give up one shred of liberty so some coward can feel safe. Not feeling safe? Worried about terrorists? Move to Burma they have a very low crime rate,
Buddhist monks and protestersterrorists are shot on sight.TenguPhule
You can lie till your lungs explode and it will not change the fact that waterboarding is torture.
The same way it was done in WW II. The same way it’s been done when batshit crazy people like you are not involved in the process.
Treat them as human beings.
It’s amazing how ignorant dipshits like you don’t spend a little time actually studying the subject before spouting off tripe like ‘torture works!’ and ‘it’s not torture if we say it isn’t’.
Stop trying to get Americans tortured, you unpatriotic asshole.
TenguPhule
Yes, they’re called Democrats and Republicans.
Another simple answer to a simple question.
Ninerdave
My only solution to this, and I’m only half kidding about this, is to give the wingnuts and Bush apologists their own state or island or something, and let them do their thing.
The sane 75% can get back to restoring some semblance of order, law and respectability.
tBone
“Unpleasant?” Only if you consider drowning unpleasant, you wuss. I mean, c’mon; there’s not even a death at the end of it. (Usually.)
In fact, a lot of people find waterboarding refreshing. It’s like an enema for your face.
We can call it Thunderdome. I give them a month before they turn to cannibalism, tops. “Sucks to your ass-mar, Rove!”
Pooh
The only surprising thing about this is that it happened in November 2007 and not Jan 2007.
grumpy realist
Yet another reason why I’m so annoyed at people like Patterico–a sizeable percentage of the US population is now perfectly happy to tear up most of our legal checks and balances because they’re piddling themselves in fear.
The world was not made to be Safe. Let’s just take some state in the middle of the US–like Kansas–put all the individuals who “want to be safe from the terrorists” there, build a big fence around it, and keep our own legal traditions, checks and balances. They can do whatever they damn well please, including waterboarding each other if that makes them feel better.
And this thing in Boston? Bad idea.
jake
Heh. In less than a year 25percentopia would decide we’re a terrorist state and declare war. The 101st Fightin’ Keyboardists would lob spite and flaming bags of Cheetos from their bunkers that look suspiciously like their moms’ basement.
And of course, back in 75percentopia, a fresh crop of shits would soon bob to the surface.
laneman
I think jake’s post get a POTD
that was brilliant
RSA
tBone, you have a future on Madison Avenue. Who wouldn’t want to be waterboarded after hearing that pitch?
chopper
it doesn’t even need that much explaining. it was torture when the japanese did it, it was torture when the nazis did it, it was torture when the khmer rouge did it, it was torture when the KKK did it.
John's Minions
Here’s our brief question on waterboarding, why don’t all the manly types who keep insisting that it’s not torture volunteer to have it done, and not by another fucking reporter, or the U.S. Marines or their delta brothers.
If you think it’s no big deal, then fly to fucking Iraq, drive around unguarded until you get kidnapped and then ask the people holding you to do it to you then.
That would be more on target, a situation where you don’t fucking know if you’re going to walk out of the god-damned room!!
Until then, kindly shut your pie-holes.
r€nato
they wouldn’t be happy unless they had someone to subjugate to their insanity.
r€nato
getting back to the topic of the post (what a concept), I really don’t understand why a parent needs the cops to search their kid’s room. My folks had no qualms about going through my room when I wasn’t home.
I would think this would have every right-winger screeching about nanny government. Parents need the cops to search their kid’s room? WTF? Maybe there’s something I don’t understand about life in Boston’s lower-class areas, but if parents can’t handle the task of looking for contraband in their kid’s room under their own roof, then are they really fit parents?
BIRDZILLA
Here we are comming to 1984 and BIG BROTHER and a police state whats become of our constitution?
yet another jeff
Hey, BIRDZILLA…I think fahs ibair is calling you a liberal….
BIRDZILLA
IM NO LIBERAL JEFF IM A CONSERVATIVE BIRD SQUAWK SQUAWK
Richard
I have no problem going through my children’s belongings when they ARE here. Don’t need the law for that, it’s just part of parenting. If there are really any people that are afraid to do so then perhaps they should have thought twice BEFORE becoming parents.