In addition to ruling 5-4 this week to allow prison strip searches for minor offenses, they now have ruled that government witnesses — informants — can lie to Grand Juries and, in so doing, will be immune from civil lawsuits by the wrongfully accused.

Justice Alito concurred with the strip search opinion above, and he is at the forefront of this current ruling, which I believe sets a horrible precedent that lying even to a Grand Jury carries no penalty whatsoever.

The ruling makes an argument that Grand Jury cases often involve violent criminal elements, which seek to go after witnesses, and that civil lawsuits would only seek to publish their identity, putting witnesses in harm’s way.  Furthermore, Alito argued that suits could deliberately be filed specifically to uncover a particular identity.

While this particular reasoning seems logical at first glance, the case upon which this ruling was established was not one where the above scenario would apply.  In other words, the precedent-setting case is one that establishes the broadest possible framework.  The case is Rehberg vs. Paul in which:

The civil suit had targeted an investigator for a Georgia district attorney who testified that accountant Charles Rehberg had harassed officials at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. Rehberg claims the investigator lied, and he started the investigation as a favor to the hospital after Rehberg sent a series of faxes criticizing its management. The investigator had testified before three grand juries in a matter of months, resulting in three indictments that were each dismissed. (Source)

This only illustrates the type of behavior that is bound to take place under such a system of mandated lying: an increasing number of indictments with an increasing number of case dismissals — once again burdening the judicial system and taxpayers with a growing pool of the wrongfully accused.

While the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, some of my questions are echoed in the first two comments to be received at the ABA Journal website where the ruling was announced:

Joe writes:

Am I missing something here? If, hypothetically, a witness was caught lying, and is prosecuted for perjury, the defendant who was wrongly accused/imprisoned wouldn’t have the right to sue? How would barring that defendant the right to sue discourage people from acting as witnesses? If you tell the truth, there should be no reason for you to be afraid of a lawsuit.

JR writes:

Did it ever occur to Justice Alito and his ivory tower colleagues that, through subpoenas, parties can compel witnesses to testify?  Immunity only fosters lying.  As for perjury, the court should read its own precedents to see the difficulties of prosecution. As the NY Times wrote, this court has fewer judges with practical experience than in history.

The U.S. Constitution is a document that is supposed to guarantee that one is innocent until proven guilty.  This ruling by the Supreme Court seems to completely invert that concept and give license to false indictments, without recourse to those who have been brought in under some level of presumed guilt. You can read the full opinion here:  PDF.

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/04/ok-for-government-witnesses-to-lie-to.html

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Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by the court’s conservative wing, wrote that courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials who must consider not only the possibility of smuggled weapons and drugs, but also public health and information about gang affiliations.

“Every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed,” Justice Kennedy wrote, adding that about 13 million people are admitted each year to the nation’s jails.

The procedures endorsed by the majority are forbidden by statute in at least 10 states and are at odds with the policies of federal authorities. According to a supporting brief filed by the American Bar Association, international human rights treaties also ban the procedures.

The federal appeals courts had been split on the question, though most of them prohibited strip-searches unless they were based on a reasonable suspicion that contraband was present. The Supreme Court did not say that strip-searches of every new arrestee were required; it ruled, rather, that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches did not forbid them.

Daron Hall, the president of the American Correctional Association and sheriff of Davidson County, Tenn., said the association welcomed the flexibility offered by the decision. The association’s current standards discourage blanket strip-search policies.

Monday’s sharply divided decision came from a court whose ideological differences are under intense scrutiny after last week’s arguments on President Obama’s health care law. The ruling came less than two weeks after a pair of major 5-to-4 decisions on the right to counsel in plea negotiations, though there Justice Kennedy had joined the court’s liberal wing. The majority and dissenting opinions on Monday agreed that the search procedures the decision allowed — close visual inspection by a guard while naked — were more intrusive than being observed while showering, but did not involve bodily contact.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the four dissenters, said the strip-searches the majority allowed were “a serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy” and should be used only when there was good reason to do so.

Justice Breyer said that the Fourth Amendment should be understood to bar strip-searches of people arrested for minor offenses not involving drugs or violence, unless officials had a reasonable suspicion that they were carrying contraband.

Monday’s decision endorsed a recent trend, from appeals courts in Atlanta, San Francisco and Philadelphia, allowing strip-searches of everyone admitted to a jail’s general population. At least seven other appeals courts, on the other hand, had ruled that such searches were proper only if there was a reasonable suspicion that the arrested person had contraband.

According to opinions in the lower courts, people may be strip-searched after arrests for violating a leash law, driving without a license and failing to pay child support. Citing examples from briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, Justice Breyer wrote that people have been subjected to “the humiliation of a visual strip-search” after being arrested for driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal and riding a bicycle without an audible bell.

A nun was strip-searched, he wrote, after an arrest for trespassing during an antiwar demonstration.

Justice Kennedy responded that “people detained for minor offenses can turn out to be the most devious and dangerous criminals.” He noted that Timothy McVeigh, later put to death for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was first arrested for driving without a license plate. “One of the terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was stopped and ticketed for speeding just two days before hijacking Flight 93,” Justice Kennedy added.

The case decided Monday, Florence v. County of Burlington, No. 10-945, arose from the arrest of Albert W. Florence in New Jersey in 2005. Mr. Florence was in the passenger seat of his BMW when a state trooper pulled his wife, April, over for speeding. A records search revealed an outstanding warrant for Mr. Florence’s arrest based on an unpaid fine. (The information was wrong; the fine had been paid.)

Mr. Florence was held for a week in jails in Burlington and Essex Counties, and he was strip-searched in each. There is some dispute about the details, but general agreement that he was made to stand naked in front of a guard who required him to move intimate parts of his body. The guards did not touch him.

“Turn around,” Mr. Florence, in an interview last year, recalled being told by jail officials. “Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.”

“I consider myself a man’s man,” said Mr. Florence, a finance executive for a car dealership. “Six-three. Big guy. It was humiliating. It made me feel less than a man.”

Justice Kennedy said the most relevant precedent was Bell v. Wolfish, which was decided by a 5-to-4 vote in 1979. It allowed strip-searches of people held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York after “contact visits” with outsiders.

As in the Bell case, Justice Kennedy wrote, the “undoubted security imperatives involved in jail supervision override the assertion that some detainees must be exempt from the more invasive search procedures at issue absent reasonable suspicion of a concealed weapon or other contraband.”

The majority and dissenting opinions drew differing conclusions from the available information about the amount of contraband introduced into jails and how much strip-searches add to pat-downs and metal detectors.

Justice Kennedy said one person arrested for disorderly conduct in Washington State “managed to hide a lighter, tobacco, tattoo needles and other prohibited items in his rectal cavity.” Officials in San Francisco, he added, “have discovered contraband hidden in body cavities of people arrested for trespassing, public nuisance and shoplifting.”

Justice Breyer wrote that there was very little empirical support for the idea that strip-searches detect contraband that would not have been found had jail officials used less intrusive means, particularly if strip-searches were allowed when officials had a reasonable suspicion that they would find something.

For instance, in a study of 23,000 people admitted to a correctional facility in Orange County, N.Y., using that standard, there was at most one instance of contraband detected that would not otherwise have been found, Judge Breyer wrote.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Justice Breyer’s dissent.

Justice Kennedy said that strict policies deter people entering jails from even trying to smuggle contraband.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined all of Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion, and Justice Clarence Thomas joined most of it.

In a concurrence, Chief Justice Roberts, quoting from an earlier decision, said that exceptions to Monday’s ruling were still possible “to ensure that we ‘not embarrass the future.’ ”

Justice Alito wrote that different rules might apply for people arrested but not held with the general population or whose detentions had “not been reviewed by a judicial officer.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/us/justices-approve-strip-searches-for-any-offense.html?_r=2&hp

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Click here to view the embedded video.

Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars, cash or other property.

Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head. With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.

Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture chronicles how state and federal laws leave innocent property owners vulnerable to forfeiture abuse and encourage law enforcement to take property to boost their budgets. The report finds that by giving law enforcement a direct financial stake in forfeiture efforts, most state and federal laws encourage policing for profit, not justice.

Policing for Profit also grades the states on how well they protect property owners—only three states receive a B or better. And in most states, public accountability is limited as there is little oversight or reporting about how police and prosecutors use civil forfeiture or spend the proceeds.

Federal laws encourage even more civil forfeiture abuse through a loophole called “equitable sharing” that allows law enforcement to circumvent even the limited protections of state laws. With equitable sharing, law enforcement agencies can and do profit from forfeitures they wouldn’t be able to under state law.

It’s time to end civil forfeiture. People shouldn’t lose their property without being convicted of a crime, and law enforcement shouldn’t be able to profit from other people’s property.

http://www.ij.org/about/3114

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A little noticed provision in the House Armed Services Committee’s National Defense Authorization Act would authorize the United States to use military force anywhere there are terrorism suspects, including within the U.S. itself, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Section 1034 was added to the bill [PDF] by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA).

“Congress may soon vote on a new declaration of worldwide war without end, and without clear enemies,” the ACLU warned in a statement. “A ‘sleeper provision’ deep inside defense bills pending before Congress could become the single biggest hand-over of unchecked war authority from Congress to the executive branch in modern American history.”

The only opposition to the provision has come from Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), who offered an amendment to strike Section 1034 while the House Armed Services Committee was reviewing the bill. The committee passed the National Defense Authorization Act by a 60 to 1 vote — without the proposed amendment — with Garamendi as the sole dissenter.

Garamendi said he plans to introduce the amendment again on the House floor, where debate on the bill will begin the week of May 23.

“President Obama has not sought new war authority,” the ACLU said. “In fact, his administration has made clear that it believes it already has all of the authority that it needs to fight terrorism.”

“But Congress is considering monumental new legislation that would grant the president – and all presidents after him – sweeping new power to make war almost anywhere and everywhere.”

Garamendi said the National Defense Authorization Act also extends the war in Afghanistan, delays the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and furthers billions of dollars in wasteful Pentagon spending.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/16/aclu-national-defense-bill-authorizes-worldwide-war-without-end/

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You’re sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door. Half-awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers. At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way. With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun. You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it. In the darkness, you make out two shadows.

One holds something that looks like a crowbar. When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside. As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you’re in trouble.
In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few That are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless. Yours was never registered. Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm. When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.

“What kind of sentence will I get?” you ask.

“Only ten-to-twelve years,” he replies, as if that’s nothing.”Behave yourself, and you’ll be out in seven.”
The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you’re portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys. Their friends and relatives can’t find an unkind word to say about them. Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both “victims” have been arrested numerous times. But the next day’s headline sa ys it all: “Lovable Rogue Son Didn’t Deserve to Die.” The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters. As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media. The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.
Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he’ll probably win. The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you’ve been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects. After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time. The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.

A few months later, you go to trial. The charges haven’t been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted. When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you. Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean , vengeful man. It doesn’t take long for the jury to convict you of all charges. The judge sentences you to life in prison.

This case really happened. On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk , England, killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term.
How did it become a crime to defend one’s own life in the once great British Empire ?

It started with the Pistols Act of 1903. This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license. The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns.
Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.

Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed Man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.
The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of “gun control”, demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)
Nine years later, at Dunblane , Scotland , Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school.
For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable, or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearm still owned by private citizens.
During the years in which the British gover nment incrementally took Away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released.
Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, “We cannot have people take the law into their own hands.” All of Martin’s neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences. Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.
When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities. Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the la w. The few who didn’t were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn’t comply. Police later bragged that they’d taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens. How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed. Kind of like cars. Sound familiar?

WAKE UP AMERICA, THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.
It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds..”
–Samuel Adams

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Well folks there it is. It’s official the Constitution means shit to this government and you are expected to go along or the same thing will happen to you. You have to love that “paid informants”, The Ministerium für Staatssicherheit attitude. Classic conversion from democracy to communism and we all get front row seats.

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