Tag: law

Fourth Amendment Dead?

Unconstitutional actions are constitutional.

A federal judge doesn’t say so explicitly, but that’s what his ruling amounts to.

The case, which we discussed previously, involves U.S. Private Vaults, a Beverly Hills company that the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided last year. The company has been fined $1.1 million for money laundering because it let dealers anonymously keep cash in its safe deposit boxes.

Judge Gary Klausner concedes that the FBI lied to obtain a warrant, planning to seize the property of all boxholders whether or not there was any evidence of a crime against a given boxholder. And to this day, “specific criminal conduct has not been alleged against customers.” Nevertheless, Klausner ruled that despite the lie, it was constitutional for the FBI to grab the boxes’ contents.

Of course, if the warrant authorizing the FBI to ignore Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures had been honestly solicited, that still would not have transmuted unconstitutional actions into constitutional ones.

“The court does not deny that the government had an improper motive when it applied for its warrant,” observes Rob Johnson, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, which is representing the boxholders.

“But it says that fact is irrelevant unless the improper investigatory motive was the only reason that the Government opened the safety deposit boxes.… If today’s shocking decision stands, it will set a dangerous precedent that will allow the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to bypass the Fourth Amendment.”

Thankfully, the Institute for Justice doesn’t regard the case as closed. It will appeal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 4th Amendment, freedom, law, police

ballot access judiciary

Zombie Vote Protected

A few weeks before the election, a federal judge has blocked Arizona legislation to combat voter fraud.

Opponents routinely characterize efforts such as this Arizona measure to ensure election integrity as “voter suppression.” Charges of racial discrimination often get tossed in to allow for the customary level of hysterical partisan denunciation.

According to Jon Sherman of the Fair Elections Center, even if HB2243 is “not discriminatory on its face . . . it is an open invitation. It declares open season for discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, dress, English proficiency, anything else.”

Of course,HB2243 extends no such invitation.

The legislation states that registration forms shall contain such things as a statement “that if the registrant permanently moves to another state after registering to vote in this state, the registrant’s voter registration shall be canceled.”

It also authorizes the county reorder to cancel a registration when he “is informed and confirms that the person registered is dead.”

Sounds like it could certainly suppress the zombie vote.

Legislation should be as carefully worded as possible. But no degree of precision in a law designed to prevent persons from voting who are not entitled to vote will prevent opponents from charging that it’s really, deep down inside, about “declaring open season for discrimination.”

Had the Arizona legislature passed the new law in plenty of time to grapple with legal challenges, the reformmighthave been in place for the mid-terms. Let’s hope HB2243 is in place and free of judicial encumbrance by 2024.

Enacting this kind of legislation is of many things that need to be done to safeguard elections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags ballot access, elections, law, voting

Accountability U.S. Constitution

You Could Look It Up

Your constitutional rights have been violated. Now what?

One thing you can do is find out exactly where you stand with respect to what the Institute for Justice calls “clearly established law.” IJ has created a new research tool, the Constitutional GPA, to help lawyers and others identify relevant legal decisions.

The tool is designed to help users make government accountable despite the many confusing barriers to accountability. The “GPA” in the name refers both to “grade point average” and the question that is part of the tool’s graphic design: “Is your Government Preventing Accountability?”

Doctrines of qualified immunity and other special rules often prevent government officials who violate your rights from being held responsible unless courts have ruled otherwise with respect to specific rights-violating actions. Exactly what the law permits or proscribes can vary widely in different jurisdictions.

The interactive tool grades state governments and federal courts of appeal based on how they treat claims of immunity and helps users “identify the clearly established law necessary to defeat qualified immunity.”

IJ gives the example of a government employee’s unjustified search of your car supposing this takes place in Nevada. Answering a few simple questions enables one to search the Constitutional GPA database of hundreds of cases to find about a dozen pertinent legal decisions.

So if you find yourself on the wrongest of wrong ends of the State, watch the Institute’s YouTube video on how to use the new tool and try it out at the ij.org/gpa web page.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Institute for Justice, law, qualified immunity

crime and punishment general freedom

Starbucks Gets Out

Starbucks, coffee, violence, crime, safety

Though not a fan of Starbucks’s often obtrusive lefty politics, I sure like its beverages, such as the glorious Flat White. I’ll take a venti.

Thankfully, it appears that trendy politics has limits. Despite the company’s support for a Marxist organization that riots and rampages in the name of racial justice (I won’t name names, but the initials are BLM), CEO Howard Schultz is reluctant to tolerate crime that makes it unsafe to sell lattes.

In leaked video of an internal meeting, Schultz says he’s shocked “that one of the primary concerns that our retail partners [employees] have is their own personal safety.”

One way Starbucks will cope is by giving managers authority to do things like limit seating and close bathrooms. Employees will also be trained in conflict de-escalation and dealing with “active shooter scenarios.”

And Starbucks will close “not unprofitable” shops in areas where risks to employees and customers are most severe. This means closing 16 stores in which people feel unsafe because of crime and open drug use. The closures are taking place in such bastions of crime nurturing as Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington DC.

More shutdowns are to come, Schultz said, adding that “governments across the country and leaders, mayors and governors, city councils have abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime.”

Starbucks has — all companies have — every right to escape the resulting lawless conditions.

Were they also to abstain from doing anything to promote such conditions, that would be whipped cream on top.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture local leaders

Sorosian Justice?

George Soros, San Francisco, crime, justice

Criminal courts provide an old kind of justice, where individuals’ specific acts are judged and individuals, if found guilty, are punished.

“Social justice” is something else again — a daring, socialistic attempt to correct for all the ills “of society” or, more widely, “the cosmos.” That’s a huge agenda to stuff into the old practice, which, while never perfect, did serve, in its way, a noble social goal: curbing crime.

But when the social justice crowd infiltrated the old system in places like California, crime flourished. In early June, San Franciscans recalled their radical District Attorney and sent woke politics into a tailspin.

I’ve reported on this, but the story continues. As explained by Jack Phillips in The Epoch Times, the newly appointed replacement “district attorney in San Francisco fired at least 15 employees from the prosecutor’s office after her left-wing predecessor Chesa Boudin was recalled last month.”

Heads rolled. And heads weren’t pleased.

“I was unceremoniously fired without cause via phone by the Mayor’s appointed DA,” one prominent civil servant tweeted. “I am the highest-ranking Latina/LGBTQ member of the management team at that office. I will continue the fight 4justice.”

But what is that justice?

It’s a “fairer system,” said Chesa Boudin, the ousted DA, who objects to having been “scapegoated” for rising crime — but it’s sure hard to believe his pro-criminal policies did not contribute to the crime wave.

Boudin’s brand of justice has been rumored to benefit from extensive promotion by billionaire George Soros. Soros’s office has denied supporting Boudin, yet The Epoch Times notes that Mr. Soros’s PAC funded, through an intermediary, Boudin’s recall defense campaign.

Most Americans want reforms to our justice system but do not agree with George Soros.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags criminal justice reform, George Soros, justice, law, San Francisco

ideological culture

Not Tired of Winning

The title of a Wall Street Journal op-ed by lawyers Paul Clement and Erin Murphy, “The Law Firm That Got Tired of Winning,” is not strictly accurate.

As reported there and in an accompanying Journal editorial (“You Won Your Gun Case. You’re Fired”), the law firm Kirkland & Ellis did tell Clement and Murphy to quit their Second Amendment clients or quit the firm. But not because it was pushed past the edge of exhaustion when these attorneys won a major U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming the Second Amendment right to carry a concealed firearm.

Of course, the op-ed title is ironic.

We all know that it’s the terror of the vituperative left that’s got Kirkland & Ellis suddenly gun-rights-shy and welshing on a prior agreement. In 2016, when the firm recruited Clement, he required as a term of employment that he be able to retain clients involved in Second Amendment litigation.

Clement and Murphy write that it is no novelty for lawyers to represent controversial clients and no virtue to abandon them for light and transient causes. Moreover, the Constitution “isn’t self-executing”; it depends on lawyers willing to take on controversial cases and judges willing to hear the best arguments for both sides.

So, rather than abandon clients of long standing, they’ve left Kirkland & Ellis.

Kirkland & Ellis has every right to run its affairs this way. But prospective clients should think thrice before entrusting their fate to such a firm.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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