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Whatever happened to the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution you know, the one prohibiting infliction of cruel and unusual punishment on prisoners?

Rep. Adam Schiff has already put 16 hours in on his opening arguments in the Senate, with a little help here and there from Rep. Jerry the Penguin Nadler and assorted other Democrat lunatics.

And the 100 members of the Senate also known as the prisoners have to put in another eight hours in stir today listening to Shifty Schiffs same old you-know-what.

If 24 hours of Adam Schiffs bug-eyed rants dont represent cruel and unusual punishment, then what does?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein fled Wednesday night, not even trying to cover her tracks, saying Goodnight to two reporters as she took it on the lam. Granted, shes 85 years old, but it has to be excruciating even if youre not knock-knock-knocking on heavens door.

Sen. Rand Paul was seen surreptitiously doing a crossword puzzle. Sen. Bernie Sanders, almost as ancient as Feinstein, dozed at his desk.

Of course the Democrats with press passes were swooning over Schiffs BS, claiming to be fascinated, enthralled, riveted breathless, as if they were reviewing opening night of a hit Broadway musical. Sen. Chuck Schumer went so far as to say that Schiff was delivering his remarks succinctly.

Succinctly! I was a young man when Adam Schiff began speaking and he hasnt stopped yakking yet.

As a reporter, Ive always enjoyed covering trials. Its all right there in front of you, on the public record. When either side introduces a photo or document into evidence, you can put it into the paper. You can bring cameras into state courtrooms. At the Moakley Federal Courthouse, you can tweet.

But the fact is, even the best trials have shall we say dry spells. When technical testimony is being put into evidence, or the lawyers are arguing among themselves with the judge at interminable sidebar conferences.

Still, a spectator always know that eventually, the action in the courtroom is going to resume. Take opening arguments I dont think Ive ever heard one go on longer than a couple of hours. A judge wouldnt permit it. Beyond that, any lawyer that long-winded would lose the jury, before he even called his first witness.

But these Democrats just keep droning on and on and on.

And there seem to be no rules. First of all, the president is not charged with committing bribery, treason, or any other high crimes or misdemeanors. In a real trial, that would be enough for the defense counsel to immediately move for a directed verdict of acquittal. How can you convict somebody of nothing?

Another thing: Schiff has mentioned Russia, I believe, more than 40 times. Again, in a real courtroom, the defense lawyer would be on his feet, objecting. These same clowns tried to frame Trump on the Russian collusion hoax, and he was, in effect, acquitted.

So theres another amendment to the Bill of the Rights that the Democrats are trashing: the Fifth.

No person shall be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life and limb.

Unless, of course, your name is Donald Trump.

One by one, the Democrats are trashing the entire Bill of Rights. In 2016, Hillary Clinton openly ran on a platform of overturning Citizens United (the First Amendment) and D.C. v. Heller (the Second).

Then theres the Fourth Amendment, prohibiting illegal search and seizure. Ask Carter Page how that works out for you in the Democrats secret corrupt FISA courts with their secret Democrat police known as the FBI falsifying evidence against you.

Making up evidence under oath the Democrats dont care much about the 10 Commandments either, apparently. Remember Number 8 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Unless he works for Donald Trump and went to the U.S. Naval Academy. Then its okay, right Democrats?

How about the Sixth Amendment you know, the one that lets the accused confront his accuser. That ones out the window now too, at least for POTUS. The whistleblower must be protected at all costs, especially since he has no direct evidence, only hearsay, which used to be inadmissible in a court. But thats just the old Constitution, and,the Democrats go by the living Constitution, which means, they make it up as they go along, to frame anyone they disagree with, which is anybody who they disparage as a Deplorable.

Its bad for everybody, but especially Rand Paul. First a Bernie bro tried to shoot him at a baseball practice. Then his moonbat neighbor in Kentucky (originally from New Bedford) almost killed him in an unprovoked assault.

And now Paul has to listen to Adam Schiff for 24 hours, with only a crossword puzzle for comfort.

Are the nominations for the 2020 Profiles in Courage Award closed? Id like to make a motion for Rand Paul .

See the article here:
Howie Carr: Weve all had just about enough of this Schiff - Boston Herald

"He obstructed us. He is trying to obstruct you. And he has violated the Constitution," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., thundered during his closing statement before the Senate Thursday evening. It was a powerful moment that belied an inconvenient truth about the impeachment trial of Donald Trump: Democrats ceded their moral authority in the case long ago.

As Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges argues in a new interview with "Rising's" Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, the Democratic Party has been "selective" in its assessment of what rises to a constitutional violation, willfully ignoring a litany of crimes committed by the Bush and Obama administrations. "What are they?" he asks rhetorically. "Those would be nine illegal warswars are supposed to be declared by Congress; the war in Yemen; the wholesale surveillance begun by the Bush administration, exposed by Edward Snowden, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment; [violations of] the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it a crime for the government to surveil any U.S. citizens; the global programming of extraordinary rendition, kidnapping and torture; [and] the decision by the Obama administration to reinterpret the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force Act to give it the right to act as judge, jury and executioner and assassinate U.S. citizens."

Later in the segment, Hedges claims the Democratic Party "engages in a form of demagoguery every bit as pernicious as the demagoguery that the Trump White House does." While the latter targets Muslims and undocumented immigrants, the former blames Russia for the results of the 2016 election rather than admit its complicity in the neoliberal policies that enabled Trump's victory. "Democrats are also living in an alternative reality," he says.

Watch the interview in its entirety above.

Continued here:
Chris Hedges: Democrats Have No Moral Authority on Impeachment - Truthdig

from the stay-in-your-own-lane,-g-men dept

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has suggested -- not exactly ruled -- that backdoor searches of Section 702 collections targeting Americans (citizens and permanent residents) is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The case involves Agron Hasbajrami, a lawful permanent resident who was arrested in 2011 as he attempted to board a flight to Turkey. The government claimed Agron -- an Albanian immigrant -- was ultimately headed to Pakistan to join a terrorist organization.

Agron is somewhat of a unicorn. He's one of the few defendants that's actually been informed the evidence used against him was derived from NSA collections under Section 702. The DOJ is supposed to be proactive about this, but instead has chosen to emphasize parallel construction over transparency.

The evidence appears to have come from a backdoor search by the FBI. The FBI is allowed to access Section 702 collections, but domestic data and communications are supposed to be "minimized" to protect US persons swept up by the NSA. If the FBI performs backdoor searches to access Americans' communications that have been incidentally collected by the NSA foreign-facing surveillance programs, it should have to obtain a warrant. But that's not actually the case for a couple of reasons. First, very few defendants are ever informed of the true source of the evidence against them. Second, the secrecy shrouding the NSA's collections and the Intelligence Community's access prevents a lot of judicial examination in the few cases where evidence can actually be challenged.

The Second Circuit's ruling [PDF] kicks Hasbajrami's case back down to the lower court so it can reexamine the Fourth Amendment implications of warrantless backdoor searches. The Appeals Court has no problem with the NSA's collections, which putatively target foreigners. The court says these are lawful. Accessing collected communications from Americans via the NSA's collections, not so much.

The issue here isn't the collection itself or any inadvertent collection of US persons' communications. The problem is the querying of stored communications without a warrant when the target of the queries is a US person. The court doesn't say the FBI can't look at its own stored collections without a warrant to locate intelligence or evidence. Stuff it has already acquired is fair game, more or less. The court makes a physical analogy:

It is true the FBI does not need an additional warrant to go down to its evidence locker and look through a box of evidence it collected from a crime scene.

But that's where the analogy ends.

But lawful collection alone is not always enough to justify a future search.

Pointing to the Riley decision, the court notes that the lawful seizure of an arrestee's phone does not give law enforcement the right to perform a warrantless search of its contents.

Searching the FBI's own data stores tipped to it by the NSA isn't nearly as problematic as what the FBI appears to have done here: browsing the NSA's much larger collection without a warrant to find more communications originating from a US person. Say goodbye to any flattering "evidence locker" analogies.

If such a vast body of information [250 million emails as of 2011] is simply stored in a database, available for review by request from domestic law enforcement agencies solely on the speculative possibility that evidence of interest to agents investigating a particular individual might be found there, the program begins to look more like a dragnet, and less like an individual officer going to the evidence locker to check out a previously-acquired piece of evidence against some newfound insight.

And there's where the Fourth Amendment fits in:

To permit that information to be accessed indiscriminately, for domestic law enforcement purposes, without any reason to believe that the individual is involved in any criminal activity and or even that any information about that person is likely to be in the database, just to see if there is anything incriminating in any conversations that might happen to be there, would be at odds with the bedrock Fourth Amendment concept that law enforcement agents may not invade the privacy of individuals without some objective reason to believe that evidence of a crime will be found by a search.

The case returns to the lower court so it can consider the Fourth Amendment implications it chose to ignore when considering the defendant's motion to suppress evidence that is starting to look like it was acquired unconstitutionally.

If this results in suppression, this case is going to travel right back up the judicial ladder. There's no way the government is going to let its backdoor searches be subject to a warrant requirement. Warrants create paper trails, and the last thing the IC wants is more paperwork linking domestic surveillance to foreign-facing NSA collections. This isn't a win yet, but if the district court aligns itself with the Appeals Court's suggestions, it could be a game changer.

Filed Under: 2nd circuit, 4th amendment, agron hasbajrami, backdoor searches, evidence, fbi, nsa, parallel construction, section 702

Read the rest here:
Second Circuit Says Warrantless Backdoor Searches Of NSA Collections Might Violate The Fourth Amendment - Techdirt

Posted Thu, December 19th, 2019 9:13 am by Andrew Hamm

This week we highlight petitions pending before the Supreme Court that address, among other things, whether a motorists assertion of his Fourth Amendment right to refuse consent to a warrantless blood test may be used as evidence of guilt for the offense of driving under the influence, whether a levy that forces property owners to fund other individuals campaign donations implicates the First Amendments compelled-subsidy doctrine, and whether the government-debt exception to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991s automated-call restriction violates the First Amendment.

Thepetitions of the weekare below the jump:

Elster v. City of Seattle, Washington19-608Issues: (1) Whether a levy that forces property owners to fund other individuals campaign donations implicates the First Amendments compelled-subsidy doctrine; and (2) whether a compelled subsidy of speech should be examined under rational-basis review, as the decision below concluded, or whether a higher standard of review is appropriate.

Cisco Systems Inc. v. SRI International Inc.19-619Issue:Whether patent claims that recite only the abstract idea of collecting and analyzing data are patent-ineligible under35 U.S.C. 101andAlice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International.

Bell v. Pennsylvania19-622Issue:Whether a motorists assertion of his Fourth Amendment right to refuse consent to a warrantless blood test may be used as evidence of guilt for the offense of driving under the influence.

Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants Inc.19-631Issue:Whether the government-debt exception to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991s automated-call restriction violates the First Amendment, and whether the proper remedy for any constitutional violation is to sever the exception from the remainder of the statute.

Arizona v. Nunez-Diaz19-645Issues: (1) Whether the respondent, Hector Sebastion Nunez-Diaz, is categorically barred from establishing prejudice underStrickland v. Washingtonfor aPadilla v. Kentucky/Lee v. United Statesclaim because, as an unauthorized alien, he is without any legal right to remain in the United States; and (2) whether the Arizona Supreme Court erred in findingStricklandprejudice, where inter alia there was no evidence that the respondent had a viable defense either to the criminal charges or deportation.

Posted in Elster v. City of Seattle, Washington, Cisco Systems Inc. v. SRI Int'l Inc., Bell v. Pennsylvania, Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants Inc., Arizona v. Nunez-Diaz, Cases in the Pipeline

Recommended Citation: Andrew Hamm, Petitions of the week, SCOTUSblog (Dec. 19, 2019, 9:13 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/12/petitions-of-the-week-74/

View original post here:
Petitions of the week - SCOTUSblog

ANDERSON A man suspected of trying to sell look-alike substances at Hoosier Park Racing & Casino has had his drug-related conviction reversed, based on a claim of violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

In the 2015 case, Michael D. Johnson was patted down by a gaming enforcement agent at Hoosier Park in Anderson, according to The Indiana Lawyer.

A small amount of white powder was found on Johnson, but subsequent testing revealed the white powder was not a drug. It contained a chemical possibly deriving from baking soda.

Johnson was arrested and later charged with dealing in a look-alike substance. He moved to suppress the evidence obtained during the pat-down search, but the Madison County Circuit Court denied the motion. Johnson then objected at trial to the admission of the evidence found in his pocket, but the trial court determined the officer had completed a search incident to arrest when he removed the item from Johnsons pocket.

The Indiana Lawyer reported that the search stemmed from a man telling a security guard that someone had approached him and asked if he wanted to buy white girl, a slang term for the drug cocaine.

Johnsons description and interaction with the man was confirmed on surveillance footage prior to the gaming enforcement officer bringing Johnson into an interview room to conduct the pat-down search.

Indiana Court of Appeals found insufficient evidence to dispel Johnsons claim of a Fourth Amendment violation.

Original post:
Conviction reversed for phony drug sale at Hoosier Park - Newsandtribune