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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The Fourth Amendments barriers to unreasonable searches and seizures dont get the attention the First Amendment does, but theyre at least as important as a guarantee of liberty. And during his White House years Barack Obama vandalized the Fourth Amendment. His glittering words blinded the media to his unprecedented assault on the right to be let alonethe most cherished right among civilized people.

The American Revolution was ignited by British invasions of the right to privacy. James Otis protested British Writs of Assistance that empowered every petty official to rummage through colonial businesses and homes on a hope and a prayer that smuggled goods or other incriminating evidence of wrongdoing might be discovered:

Custom-house officers may enter our houses when they please; we are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way; and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. Bare suspicion without oath is sufficient.

William Pitt the Elder, speaking to the British Parliament, captured the heart and soul of what came to be ratified as the Fourth Amendment:

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter,but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.

The Fourth Amendment protects reasonable expectations of privacy from government surveillance, and in Olmstead v. United States (1928), Justice Brandeis (dissenting) said that, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The government cannot invade a persons privacy without documenting a particularized and urgent criminal justice or foreign intelligence need to a neutral and impartial magistrate. The prohibition does not bend even in cases of homicide or international terrorism where its shield might enable serious wrongful conduct to escape detection. Our Constitution is anchored to the high principle that it is better to risk being the victim of injustice than to risk being complicit in it.

That is, until now. President Obamas dragnet collection of internet and phone metadata on every American citizen obliterated the Fourth Amendments privacy fortress. Without getting a court warrant, Mr. Obamas National Security Agencys Stellar Wind program indiscriminately collected internet metadata, i.e., the accounts to which Americans sent and from which they received emails. The metadata detailed the internet protocol (IP) addresses used by people inside the United States when sending emails. Julian Sanchez of the CATO Institute explained the magnitude of the invasion of privacy:

The calls you make can reveal a lot, but now that so much of our lives are mediated by the internet, your IP logs are really a real-time map of your brain: what are you reading about, what are you curious about, what personal ad are you responding to (with a dedicated email linked to that specific ad), what online discussions are you participating in, and how often?Seeing your IP logs and especially feeding them through sophisticated analytic tools is a way of getting inside your head thats in many ways on par with reading your diary.

President Obama also collected metadata on every phone call made by Americans, under a tortured interpretation of section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. Among other things, the telephony metadata included the time, duration, number called, and routing information of every phone communication in the United States. The database would enable the government to create a personal profile of citizen. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon found a high probability that the dragnet collection of telephony metadata violated the Fourth Amendment in Klayman v. Obama.

I cannot imagine a more indiscriminate and arbitrary invasion [of privacy] than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for the purpose of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely, such a program infringes on that degree of privacy that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. Indeed, I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power, would be aghast.

President Obamas own Privacy and Civil Liberties Board similarly found Steller Wind unauthorized by section 215 the USA Patriot Act. It amplified that it could not find a single instance in which the program made a concrete difference in the outcome of a terrorism investigation[and added]we are aware of no instance in which the program directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit also concluded that Stellar Wind was illegal in ACLU v. Clapper.

President Obamas presidency was unprecedented in its scorched earth tactics against the Fourth Amendment. And were only now beginning to find out how he weaponized this information against political enemies.

Read the rest here:
Obama vandalized Fourth Amendment - Washington Times

It must be tough to be a dinosaur pop media editor nowadays. All these Plebians who watch alternative news sites keep clamoring for real information, while youre trying to focus on other things.

Seriously, how can the great unwashed not see that Donald Trumps body language while walking beside a foreign dignitary is much more important than the publication by Wikileaks, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and Circa News that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court issued a secret ruling on April 26 lambasting the Obama-era National Security Agency for conducting illegal surveillance on Americans?Pop media editors must be flummoxed trying to suss out why folks in this modern era of news gathering keep trying to find out about how the federal government was spying on many of them without even obtaining the usual rubber-stamp warrants that the FISA Court hands out like candy during Trick Or Treat.

In fact, despite the dinosaur media editors stepping around it, this revelation about the FISA Court and the NSA is a major story, and sheds considerable light on just how perfidious the NSA under James Clapper has been --and how, even after the revelations of Edward Snowden about the NSA spying on Americans, the agency continued to do so.

It also serves as an opportunity to remind oneself about the FISA Court itself, and how, despite the leak of this document, the court is, in essence,sanctioned only by a 1978 law, and not by the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.

First, the revelation.

As Tim Johnson reports for the Miami Herald, one of the few old guard news sources to give this more than a fleeting mention:

The document, signed by (FISA Court) Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, said the court had learned in a notice filed Oct. 26, 2016, that National Security Agency analysts had been conducting prohibited queries of databases with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed to the court. It said a judge chastised the NSAs inspector general and Office of Compliance for Operations for an institutional lack of candor for failing to inform the court. It described the matter as a very serious Fourth Amendment issue.

Thats putting it mildly.

Lets underline a few points about this notice." First, it was 99 pages long. Second, it revealed that the NSA was not even bothering to get FISA Warrants when conducting surveillance against Americans.

As nice as it is that the FISA judge sent this notice to the NSA, the only reason we, the people on whom the NSA could be spying, know about it is because it was leaked.

This reveals a great deal about the persistentactions of the NSA under its former leader, James Clapper, a man who, when asked in 2013 Senate testimony whether the NSA was spying on Americans, said, No."

The NSA spying on Americans is contrary to the Fourth Amendment in 2013, andit continued to do so without asking for the so-called FISA Warrants required by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This, all being done by an administration whose Chief Executive claimed it was the most transparent ever.

The FISA revelation is another tiny hint that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Obama was not being truthful.

And lest we forget, this secret message, as damning as it is, comes from a court that is not really a court as the Founders envisioned it.

The FISA Court was created after the Church Hearings in Congress pursued the valid allegations that U.S. government agencies (FBI, CIA, etc) were spying on Americans, especially counter-culture figures like Martin Luther King and anti-war activists during the Vietnam Conflict. Large portions of the American public were justifiably upset about the problem, and, in classic government fashion, the politicians called their show trials, performed their kabuki theatre, and came out of it with the answer: Since the spying was against the law, they decided to write a new law to essentially make it legal while telling people they were fixing the problem.

Thus was born the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, thanks mainly to the ever-trustworthy Sen.Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts. The Act purported to protect Americans from surveillance by giving the federal government a power it didnt have according to the Constitution:the power to spy on foreigners. And, ifan American was on the other end of the conversation,to spy on that American.

All the U.S. spy agencies had to do was ask for a warrant from the newly created secret court called the FISA Court, and everything would be hunky dory.

The fact that the Fourth Amendment applies to any spying, regardless of whether it is being done to Americans or foreigners, and it requires real warrants, from real judges, public warrants in the common law tradition going back centuries? The fact that each person to be searched and each item sought had to be mentioned in this public warrant? Not part of the deal.

The FISA law essentially rewrote the Fourth Amendment, making it whatever the FISA Court wanted when it came to surveillance.

The fact that a FISA judge sent a classified message to the Executive Branch saying the NSA wasnt complying to the 1978 law is nice to know, but the entire system is unjustified based on the original intent of the people who wrote their rulebook, called the U.S. Constitution.

But it gets worse.

In fact, while the ObamaNSA continued to spy on people -- even justifying the expansion of that spying by seeing names that were merely mentioned in e-mails of people on whom they were spying, and then spying on those people it has been revealed in declassified documents that the James Comey-led FBI illegally shared surveillance data on people with third parties.

All of this is getting little press in the mainstream media, but it does not mean the issues are unimportant or will go away.

It seems the mainstream just wants us to feel good that the Obama administration was so transparent.

Heck, his gang was almost as transparent as your own private communications may have been to them.

Read more:
Bombshell Doc Reveals Massive Breaches of 4th Amendment By Obama NSA, FBI - MRCTV (blog)

In 2002 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said that the lawful use of deadly force by the police may be ruled unlawful if the police themselves "created the need to use force" by acting in an illegal manner. "Where an officer intentionally or recklessly provokes a violent confrontation, if the provocation is an independent Fourth Amendment violation," the 9th Circuit held in Billington v. Smith, the officer "may be held liable for his otherwise defensive use of deadly force." Otherwise known as the "provocation doctrine," this legal standard has served as an important check on overreaching law enforcement tactics. Today, by a vote of 8-0, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the 9th Circuit's reasoning and wiped the provocation doctrine off the books.

At issue today in County of Los Angeles v. Mendez was a 2010 incident in which two deputies from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department entered the residence of Angel Mendez and Jennifer Garcia without a search warrant, spotted Mendez holding a BB gun (which he kept on hand to fend off rats), and shot both Mendez and Garcia multiple times in ostensible self-defense. Mendez's right leg was later amputated below the knee as a result of his injuries. Garcia was shot in the back.

Mendez and Garcia sued, charging the police with illegal search, illegal seizure, and illegal use of force under the Fourth Amendment. In March 2016, Mendez and Garcia prevailed at the 9th Circuit, which rejected the officers' pleas for qualified immunity and instead held that the two detectives were "liable for the shooting as a foreseeable consequence of their unconstitutional entry even though the shooting itself was not unconstitutionally excessive force under the Fourth Amendment." In other words, Mendez and Garcia prevailed under the provocation doctrine.

Writing today for a unanimous Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito overturned that 9th Circuit decision, dismantled the provocation doctrine, and ruled in favor of the officers. The provocation doctrine "is incompatible with our excessive force jurisprudence," Justice Alito declared. "The rule's fundamental flaw is that it uses another constitutional violation to manufacture an excessive force claim where one would not otherwise exist." According to Alito, "there is no need to dress up every Fourth Amendment claim as an excessive force claim."

Of course, if the police had not violated the Constitution to begin with in this case, the police would not have had the opportunity to use any sort of force at all. The indisputable fact is that Angel Mendez would still have the use of his right leg if the detectives had not disobeyed the Fourth Amendment, illegally entered his home, and shot him.

The Supreme Court's opinion in County of Los Angeles v. Mendez is available here.

Link:
Supreme Court Rules 8-0 for Police in Major Fourth Amendment Case - Reason (blog)

Law Enforcement Should Not Be Able to Bypass the Fourth Amendment to Search Your Devices

Sending your computer to Best Buy for repairs shouldnt require you to surrender your Fourth Amendment rights. But thats apparently whats been happening when customers send their computers to a Geek Squad repair facility in Kentucky.

We think the FBIs use of Best Buy Geek Squad employees to search peoples computers without a warrant threatens to circumvent peoples constitutional rights. Thats why we filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today against the FBI seeking records about the extent to which it directs and trains Best Buy employees to conduct warrantless searches of peoples devices. Read our complaint here [PDF].

EFF has long been concerned about law enforcement using private actors, such as Best Buy employees, to conduct warrantless searches that the Fourth Amendment plainly bars police from doing themselves. The key question is at what point does a private persons search turn into a government search that implicates the Fourth Amendment. As described below, the law on the question is far from clear and needs to catch up with our digital world.

A federal prosecution of a doctor in California revealed that the FBI has been working for several years to cultivate informants in Best Buys national repair facility in Brooks, Kentucky, including reportedly paying eight Geek Squad employees as informants.

According to court records in the prosecution of the doctor, Mark Rettenmaier, the scheme would work as follows: Customers with computer problems would take their devices to the Geek Squad for repair. Once Geek Squad employees had the devices, they would surreptitiously search the unallocated storage space on the devices for evidence of suspected child porn images and then report any hits to the FBI for criminal prosecution.

Court records show that some Geek Squad employees received $500 or $1,000 payments from the FBI.

At no point did the FBI get warrants based on probable cause before Geek Squad informants conducted these searches. Nor are these cases the result of Best Buy employees happening across potential illegal content on a device and alerting authorities.

Rather, the FBI was apparently directing Geek Squad workers to conduct fishing expeditions on peoples devices to find evidence of criminal activity. Prosecutors would later argue, as they did in Rettenmaiers case, that because private Geek Squad personnel conducted the searches, there was no Fourth Amendment violation.

The judge in Rettenmaiers case appeared to agree with prosecutors, ruling earlier this month that because the doctor consented both orally and in writing to the Geek Squads search of his device, their search did not amount to a Fourth Amendment violation. The court, however, threw out other evidence against Rettenmaier after ruling that FBI agents misstated key facts in the application for a warrant to search his home and smartphone.

We disagree with the courts ruling that Rettenmaier consented to a de-facto government search of his devices when he sought Best Buy's help to repair his computer. But the court's ruling demonstrates that law enforcement agents are potentially exploiting legal ambiguity about when private searches become government action that appears intentionally designed to try to avoid the Fourth Amendment.

The FBI's use of Geek Squad employees to do their dirty work of searching people's devices without warrants is in part possible because there is a legal distinction between searches conducted by purely private parties and searches by private parties done on behalf of government agents.

The Fourth Amendment protections for persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, only protects against searches conducted by state actors or someone deputized to act on their behalf.

That means if a private actorlike your next door neighborbreaks into your home and finds evidence of a crime, theres nothing keeping the police from using your illegally gotten property or information against you. The neighbor may be liable for trespass, but it wouldn't amount to a Fourth Amendment violation. This is called the private search rule and it applies unless a court determines that the private actors are working for the government when conducting the illegal searches.

The federal appeals court covering California and other western states has ruled that determining whether a party is a state or private actor comes down to two elements: (1) whether government officials knew of and agreed to the intrusive search and (2) whether the party conducting the search intended to assist law enforcement or further her own ends.

Under this rubric, the FBI's Geek Squad informants should plainly qualify as agents of the government. The records disclosed thus far indicate that FBI agents paid Geek Squad informants to conduct these wide-ranging searches of customers' devices, suggesting that officials both knew about the searches and directed the informants to conduct them. The payments Geek Squad informants received also demonstrate that they conducted the searches with the intent to assist the FBI.

Because both factors are present in the FBI's use of Geek Squad informants, we think any court encountering facts similar to Rettenmaier's should rule that the Fourth Amendment applies to the searches conducted at Best Buy facilities. Because the Fourth Amendment generally requires the FBI to obtain warrants before searching devices, the warrantless searches by Geek Squad personnel were the result of an unconstitutional search and thus any evidence obtained as a result of the illegal searches should be thrown out of court.

However, even if the Geek Squad is found to be a state actor, the government may still argue that computer owners waived any reasonable expectation of privacy in their digital files when they consented to Best Buys terms for repairing their devices. The U.S. Supreme Court applies a reasonable person standard when a property owner is aware that they are consenting to a government search.

This proved to be the pivotal argument in Rettenmaier's case, as the government argued in its briefs that computer owners waived their Fourth Amendment rights by signing a written form stating that they are on notice that any product containing child pornography will be turned over to the authorities.

We disagree with the government's flawed argument. While the Best Buy service contract does put customers on notice that it will report child porn to the FBI if it finds it, we don't think it comes close to informing customers that Geek Squad employees are working for the FBI and will search their hard drives far beyond the scope of permission customers gave. As the Rettenmaier motions show, it appears that Best Buy staff searched unallocated storage space where the problems with the computer would not be found.

When a customer turns their devices over to Best Buy or any other repair shop, their consent to searches of their devices should be limited to where the problems with the computer are locate. Thus, customers cannot plausibly consent to expansive searches of their entire devices.

A real world analogy highlights the absurdity of the government's argument. When you go to the doctor for a sore throat, you dont expect the doctor to order an MRI of your entire body.

The FBI's exploitation of the private search doctrine by relying on Geek Squad informants to conduct searches of people's devices is incredibly problematic. As technology advances, the wealth of information that may be stored or accessed from our digital devices implicate profoundly more private spheres of our lives, from protected medical and financial information to personal information about our friends, family, and loves ones.

If courts continue to rule that the Geek Squad informants arenot state actors,thenthey are free to turn over any evidence they find to the government and law enforcement can then reconstruct the private partys search free of any Constitutional taint to then obtain a warrant for the evidence. This subverting of Constitutional protections is made possible by an outdated and problematic legal concept known as the Third Party Doctrine that bars Fourth Amendment protection when a user voluntarily shares information with a third party (here, the Geek Squad), thus defeating any reasonable expectation of privacy in the evidence. This legal theory has been applied to eviscerate individual privacy interests in such private information as bank records shared with your financial institution and cell site location information shared with your cell phone providers and produced to law enforcement without a warrant.

Currently, theres a circuit split on how this search reconstruction may take place. In the Fifth and Seventh Circuits, courts permit law enforcement to search the entire computer without a warrant based on the private partys search. In contrast, the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits restrict government searches only to the files searched by the private party. And in at least one district court in the Northern District of Indiana, the court decided that a private computer repairman had the authority to consent to a government search on behalf of the computer owner by virtue of his possession of the device.

We think that the FBI's use of Geek Squad informants is not an isolated event. Rather, it is a regular investigative tactic law enforcement employ to obtain digital evidence without first getting a warrant as the Fourth Amendment generally requires. EFF continues to look for opportunities to challenge this type of law enforcement behavior. If you have had your digital devices sent to the main Best Buy repair hub in Brooks, Kentucky for repair and it resulted in criminal proceedings against you, contact us at info@eff.org.

Continue reading here:
Why We're Suing the FBI for Records About Best Buy Geek Squad Informants - EFF

ABA Journal's Blawg 100 (2015-2016)

by John Wesley Hall Criminal Defense Lawyer and Search and seizure law consultant Little Rock, Arkansas Contact / The Book http://www.johnwesleyhall.com

2003-17, online since Feb. 24, 2003

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Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links

Latest Slip Opinions: U.S. Supreme Court (Home) Federal Appellate Courts Opinions First Circuit Second Circuit Third Circuit Fourth Circuit Fifth Circuit Sixth Circuit Seventh Circuit Eighth Circuit Ninth Circuit Tenth Circuit Eleventh Circuit D.C. Circuit Federal Circuit Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct. FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts, other Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG State courts (and some USDC opinions)

Google Scholar Advanced Google Scholar Google search tips LexisWeb LII State Appellate Courts LexisONE free caselaw Findlaw Free Opinions To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $

Research Links: Supreme Court: SCOTUSBlog S. Ct. Docket Solicitor General's site SCOTUSreport Briefs online (but no amicus briefs) Oyez Project (NWU) "On the Docket"Medill S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com

General (many free): LexisWeb Google Scholar | Google LexisOne Legal Website Directory Crimelynx Lexis.com $ Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $ Findlaw.com Findlaw.com (4th Amd) Westlaw.com $ F.R.Crim.P. 41 http://www.fd.org Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Resources FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf) DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download) DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf) Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)

Congressional Research Service: --Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012) --Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012) --Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012) --Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012) --Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012) ACLU on privacy Privacy Foundation Electronic Frontier Foundation NACDLs Domestic Drone Information Center Electronic Privacy Information Center Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.) Section 1983 Blog

"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." Me

I still learn something new every day. Pete Townshend, The Who 50th Anniversary Tour, "The Who Live at Hyde Park" (Showtime 2015)

"I can't talk about my singing. I'm inside it. How can you describe something you're inside of?" Janis Joplin

"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government." Shemaya, in the Thalmud

"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced." Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).

"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).

"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment." Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).

"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today." Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).

"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property." Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)

"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment." United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)

"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has notto put it mildlyrun smooth." Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).

"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable." Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)

"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)

Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Governments purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)

Libertythe freedom from unwarranted intrusion by governmentis as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark. United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)

"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need." Mick Jagger & Keith Richards

"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for meand by that time there was nobody left to speak up." Martin Niemller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp]

You know, most men would get discouraged by now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men! ---Pep Le Pew

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Law review article: The Effects of Legislation on Fourth ...