[Jabberwocky]

There's this local web page where we can share what we feel about editorials in our local newspaper. I found this one and wonder what you guys felt about it.

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Hi, this is Jerry Hinrikus. As we celebrate Memorial Day, I am always humbled to remember the sacrifices made by brave men and women who protected our freedom. That's why it troubles me to see a crackdown on seat belt violations by using police checkpoints all across the state. Isn't one of our most cherished freedoms protected by the fourth amendment....you know, the one which keeps us safe from unwarranted searches and seizures? A police checkpoint is no prevention effort, it's innocent motorists being forced to surrender an essential constitutional protection. It's police acting with absolutely no probably cause, and that is a grave danger to us all. I salute the brave men and women in law enforcement this Memorial Day weekend, but police checkpoints are wrong. I don't want to be forced to pull over for the police when I've done absolutely nothing wrong. I thought such checkpoints, and being forced to show ones papers were part of something Americans used to call an "evil empire". What do you think...have we gone too far with these checkpoints?

I found this:

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Unfortunately, this latest decision was no surprise. The Supreme Court has routinely ruled that cars are Fourth Amendment-free zones. No too long ago, in Wyoming v. Houghton, the court essentially stripped passengers in cars of any protection once the driver was fingered for some mischief. That was an extension of 1997's Maryland v. Wilson, which allowed police to roust passengers from a car during a routine traffic stop. The trouble actually follows an unbroken line back to 1925's Carroll v. United States, when Prohibition-era mania first bred a Fourth Amendment exception for cars. The War on Drugs has embedded a chain of such decisions in concrete in the name of "necessity."

As the law now stands, the only place in a car that cops can't go poking through is your pockets — particularly if you're a passenger and not the driver. No matter how comfortable you feel with the windows rolled up, the radio cranked, and the glove compartment locked-up tight, you should assume that the police can pull you over at will and turn that nice upholstery inside out in search of the latest contraband-of-the-week.

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I found this kind of sad that they are throwing a fit about the police pulling them over to make sure they are a little bit safer...
So what do you feel about this?

[Loki]

God bless America ...

[Briareos]

bleh.

[Poprocksz]

The Constitution has no meaning anymore to the government.....they abanded it a long time ago....
The first to go was Free Speech but no-one noticed........Did You?

i don't want to go off on this, but I fully agree with you Jabberwocky.......