Exact wording of Amendment IV to the Constitution

[xkenx]

For talking points vs. the RW. Notice no mention of warrantLESS searches. The requirements for searches WITH warrants are so clear, they didn't need to mention the notion of searches w/o warrants, although that might have been discussed in the Federalist Papers....Ken

Amendment IV
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.

[bunkerbuster1]

1. And if anyone starts braying about "A time of war..."

ask when the hell this "war on terror" will ever stop?

There's no reason it ever will.

[madokie]

2. As long as the people in America allow the misadministration to trample

on our rights because of the state of war we will never again have peace.

[tyedyeto]

3. I don't see anything in the amendment about...

'in times of war'. So, that arguement should be a moot point for the neo-con talking points.

[bunkerbuster1]

6. Should be moot, but Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus

and the SCOTUS' backing FDR's internment of Japanese Americans in a 1944 case--they're always brought up. Clearly Presidents have done unconstitutional things before and gotten away with it, and that's the neocon argument here.

It's a crappy argument though, and needs to be smashed. Bottom line is, Lincoln and FDR didn't need to do what they did to win their respective wars. Three wrongs don't make a right.

[xkenx]

13. RWers can't use the FDR internment as an agrument.

That was universally rejected as a shameful part of our history. But it does illustrate the need to keep radicals off SCOTUS.

[C_U_L8R]

8. And to top it off... there is NO war

at least no official declaration of war by Congress....

this whole thing is the stuff of fascist-fantasy.

[NewHampshireDem]

5. And point out that we (or hell, give 'em one and say REAGAN) won the Cold

War without all of this bullshit--and that was against an enemy that could literally destroy not only the US but the entire world. Are Usama and radical Islamo-fascism really more powerful that the Soviet Union?

[bunkerbuster1]

7. Good point.

Why can't Bush be less of a pussy, and more like Ronnie Raygun! Love it.

BTW, here's a wonderful echo of this argument from our good friend the Rude Pundit, commenting on Gore's MLK birthday smackdown:

Goddamn, it's such in-yer-fookin'-gob rhetoric, innit? Here's Bush, who in speech after speech makes some variation on the same stupid statement, as he did on January 11: "(I) said that after September the 11th, that oceans no longer protected us. You know, when I was growing up, or other baby boomers here were growing up, we felt safe because we had these vast oceans that could protect us from harm's way. September the 11th changed all that." And then here's Gore, calling complete and utter bullshit on that idiotic line, that the oceans couldn't even protect us from the wind-driven ships of the British, let alone Soviet ICBMs.

But the other thing Gore is doing is good ol' locker room politics: he's calling Bush a dickhead. "You want threats?" Gore is saying. "Dude, you only gotta keep track of a couple hundred goatfuckers who shit in holes on the side of a mountain. Try dealin' with a few million Soviets. God, stop being a dickhead about it and just do your job without fucking up the joint too much, a'ight?"

[DrDebug]

4. That's a 200 year old piece of paper. Who cares about that

It's no longer relevent in the new world order.

[kentuck]

9. The General focused upon "unreasonable searches"...

but overlooked "shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause..."

[rinsd]

10. Case law doesn't back that certainty up though...

...not in terms of wiretaps but drug testing and DUI checkpoints are just two examples of wrrantless searches.

[xkenx]

11. I would suspect that DUI checkpoints have been court-authorized

by having been test-cased, if not pre-authorized. With the Bush crowd, they were getting some warrants from the FISA court, and deliberately bypassed the court in other instances because they knew their proposals wouldn't pass the smell test.

[rinsd]

12. I agree...

...my post was not about the Bushit being legal but that the 4th is not as sacrosanct as we pretend it is.

[onenote]

14. notwithstanding the wording of the amendment

the courts have long recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement. How far those exceptions can/should go has been a matter of continuing debate, but it has become fairly settled law that the requirement of a warrant is not absolute.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/01.html

onenote