Unprecedented Radical Roberts Court Demands you Strip for a Traffic Ticket

This is blatantly unconstitutional. What the hell...

 

Not sure how any sane person (not evil-rich) can be a republican at this point.

 

Oh there are plenty poor and middle class Republicans for various reasons.

 

Guns, God, and gays.

 

I can't wait to hear the liberal outrage for Obama on this one too.



The Obama DOJ and strip searches

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/03/the_obama_doj_and_strip_searches/singleton/

<a href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/04/strip-search-sammy-comes-through-for-authoritarianism">Numerous</a> <a href="http://balkin.blogspot.com.br/2012/04/police-state-logic.html">progressive</a> <a href="http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/the-right-to-strip/?">commentators</a> are lambasting the Supreme Court for its 5-4 ruling yesterday in <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-945.pdf"><b>Florence </b>v. <b>Bd. of Chosen Freeholders</b></a>, and rightfully so. The 5-judge conservative faction held that prison officials may strip-search anyone arrested even for the most minor offenses before admitting them to the general population of a jail or prison, even in the absence of a shred of suspicion that they are carrying weapons or contraband. The plaintiff in this case had been erroneously arrested for outstanding bench warrants for an unpaid fine that he had actually paid, and was twice subjected to forced strip searches; he sued, claiming a violation of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. In essence, the <b>Florence</b> ruling grants prison officials license to subject every single arrested individual entering the general prison population to humiliating and highly invasive strip searches (that’s 13 million people every year, with hugely disproportionately minority representation), based on the definitive police state mentality — one that has been applied over and over — that isolated risks justify the most sweeping security measures. This policy has been applied to those arrested for offenses such as dog leash laws, peaceful protests, and driving with an expired license.</p>
<p>What virtually none of this anti-<b>Florence </b>commentary mentioned, though, was that the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/10/supreme-court-struggles-with-strip-searches/">Obama DOJ formally urged</a> the Court to reach the conclusion it reached. While the Obama administration and court conservatives have been at odds in a handful of high-profile cases (most notably <b>Citizens United</b> and the health care law), this is yet another case, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/1207/Judge-dismisses-bid-to-remove-Anwar-al-Awlaki-from-US-kill-list">in</a> <a href="http://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/all/holder-v.-humanitarian-law-project">a long</a> <a href="http://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/node/16914">line</a>, where the Obama administration was able to have its preferred policies judicially endorsed by getting right-wing judges to embrace them:</p>
<blockquote><p>In 1979, the Supreme Court ruled that in the interest of security, prisons could conduct visual body cavity searches of all detainees after they had contact with outsiders. For years after that ruling, <strong>lower courts ruled that the prison had to have a reasonable suspicion</strong> that the arrestee was concealing contraband before subjecting him to a strip search upon entering the facility.</p>
<p>But in recent years, some courts have begun to allow a blanket policy to strip search all arrestees.</p>
<p><strong>The Obama administration is siding with the prisons in the case and urging the court to allow a blanket policy for all inmates set to enter the general prison population. </strong></p>
<p>“When you have a rule that treats everyone the same,” Justice Department lawyer Nicole A. Saharsky argued, “you don’t have folks that are singled out. You don’t have any security gaps.”</p></blockquote>
<p>As <b>The Guardian </b><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/apr/02/supreme-court-strip-search-jail">said yesterday:</a> “The decision was <strong>a victory for the jails and for the Obama administration</strong>, which argued for an across-the-board rule allowing strip-searches of all those entering the general jail population, even those arrested on minor offenses.” Civil rights lawyer Stephen Bergstein <a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/strip-searches-in-local-jails-by-stephen-bergstein">added</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>This evidence suggesting that minor offenders are not smuggling contraband into jails was not good enough for the Obama administration, which is asking the Supreme Court to endorse the restrictive strip search policy in <b>Florence</b>. At oral argument, a lawyer for the Obama Justice Department told the Supreme Court that “[p]rotesters…who decide deliberately to get arrested… might be stopped by the police, they see the squad car behind them. They might have a gun or contraband in their car and think hey, I’m going to put that on my person, I just need to get it somewhere that is not going to be found during a patdown search, and then potentially they have the contraband with them.”<strong> This position would probably be identical to that advanced by a Republican presidential administration.</strong></p></blockquote>
<p><strong></strong>What makes the Obama DOJ’s position in favor of this broad strip-search authority particularly remarkable is that federal prisons do not even have this policy. As <b>The New York Times</b>‘ Adam Liptak <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/us/justices-approve-strip-searches-for-any-offense.html?_r=1&amp;ref=us">explained</a>, “the procedures endorsed by the majority are forbidden by statute in at least 10 states and are<strong> at odds with the policies of federal authorities</strong>. According to a supporting brief filed by the American Bar Association, international human rights treaties also ban the procedures.”</p>
<p>It’s rather strange to so vehemently condemn the ruling in this case as a warped, sadistic police state excess, and not even mention that the Obama DOJ vigorously advocated for this very result. The position taken by the DOJ is not dispositive: the Court is free, of course, to rule the opposite way. But the U.S. Government’s position before a federal court is definitely influential in general (which is why I <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/04/03/lawsuit_filed_over_discriminatory_immigration_law/singleton/">wrote earlier today</a> that the Obama DOJ deserves credit for refusing to defend the constitutionality of DOMA), and in a case like this specifically, it matters a great deal that the U.S. government is insisting that this broad strip-search authority is necessary for prison security. <strong>Yes, the five-judge conservative majority is to blame for this outcome, but so, too, is the Obama administration, which advocated and urged it.</strong></p>
<p>When I first started reading liberal blogs and then when I began participating in their conversations, they were principally devoted to two types of critiques: (1) the establishment media was far too deferential to Bush/Cheney policies and political leaders in general; and (2) the Democratic Party was far too accommodating of GOP policies, either out of misguided conviction or political fear. Even as it remained faithful to the notion of still supporting the Democrats in general elections, that activist template offered a vital push-back against the Democratic Party from the left. By contrast, the right-wing blogosphere back then was typically mocked as irrelevant — even by GOP politicians — because it was nothing more than a subservient cog in the RNC and right-wing noise machine, with no purpose other than to faithfully disseminate the Bush administration’s message of the day.</p>
<p>This is why it’s been so disappointing, and I think destructive, to watch that push-back model, with some exceptions, basically evaporate during the Obama presidency. In <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/us/politics/obama-attacks-house-gop-budget.html?pagewanted=all">a speech</a> to the Associated Press today, President Obama boasted that his signature domestic policies were basically conservative (he labeled them “centrist”): his individual mandate, he said, was pioneered by conservatives and the Heritage Foundation; his cap-and-trade policy was first proposed by Bush 41; federal spending is lower now than it was during any year of the Reagan administration, etc. Even the successes most touted by his supporters — <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/20/business/20auto.html?pagewanted=all">the Detroit bailout</a>, <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2008-09-24/politics/bush.bailout_1_bailout-proposal-rescue-plan-mortgage-related-securities?_s=PMOLITICS">TARP</a>, <a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/108925/iraqi_parliament_approves_status_of_forces_agreement/">the withdrawal from Iraq</a> — were started by Bush 43. Obama’s foreign policy and civil liberties assaults also, of course, were largely shared by his predecessor and are frequently <a href="http://www.salon.com/2010/10/11/continuity/">praised</a> <a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/obama-hailed-after-al-awlaki-killing-but-for-how-long/">by the Right</a>.</p>
<p>What is needed most — a strong countervailing force to these policies coming from a place other than the neoconservative Right and corporatist oligarchs — is exactly what is missing. That there is such vehement condemnation over this strip-search ruling, almost all of which ignores the fact that the Obama administration was fully on board with it and helped to bring it about, is — as <a href="http://vastleft.blogspot.com.br/2012/04/american-extremists-legally-bare.html">this VastLeft cartoon</a> suggests — a microcosm for how and why that has happened.</p>

 

Obama is a corporate w**** as well.

Right: protection, direction and the right to meekly line up for sheering. (Edit- that's anyone who votes along party lines)

 

I think everyone knows where we are headed after 911. We have seen the last two President's erode our liberties, corporations having increasing power and Republican courts from top to bottom chop our Constitutional rights to shreds.

 

1) I don't think many Republicans side with this decision
2) You are going a little extreme with your description deck. You can't be strip searched just for being pulled over. It's only if you are arrested and put in the general population.
3) I can see the argument actually being made here by the prisons. If a person is going into general pop are they supposed to sort out by offenses and say "ok that person doesn't get searched but that one does." Seems like it makes it easy for gangs to get contraband into a prison if they know they can get themselves popped without a search.
4) I agree with Roberts and Alito that being put in the general pop for a traffic ticket itself seems like it is unreasonable.

 

This is about jails too.

 

Ah good point. My bad.

 

First off, Deck, your editorial title is bull****. What the Supreme Court is: if the jail has a policy of strip searching people who are arrested, then that's fine. It doesn't mandate strip searching, it doesn't ban it.

Furthermore, it's for those who are arrested. Are we really complaining here that people in jail are being strip searched? Really?

 

It's good to note just how badly Florence was victimized... (this might be especially good for Kojirou to read)

He wasn't convicted.

He didn't commit any crime. He had, in fact, already paid the fines and had the documentation to prove it with him at the time of his arrest. Not only had he paid the fine, and not only did he show the officer a sealed letter from the state saying he had paid it, but having an unpaid fine is not an arrestable offense.

He was publicly humiliated.

Of course, simply asking for a complaint form at your local police station can result in your arrest, so....yay.

 

there is a difference between arrested and detained. I'd rather be strip searched than put in jail with a guy who has a knife.

 

Obama: bitterly disappointed But I will vote again.

Anyone else: utter bull****. OUTRAGEOUS!!! God, guns, gays!!! Insane!!

Democrats/liberals are complete tools.

 

And?

It doesn't matter why you go to jail. Jails have ALWAYS proclaimed that they have the right to strip-search any of the prisoners if they get suspicious. This is nothing new, and the Supreme Court upheld it.

And this is completely and totally irrelevant. We aren't discussing lawful or unlawful arrest. We are discussing whether a man who is arrested has the right to say "No, I refuse a strip search." And jails have always advocated that prisoners do not have the right, regardless of what they are charged with.

 

Understood. However, you remove this nasty potentiality if you do not allow these searches without probable cause or other delineations.

 

Right, because Mitt Romney is going to bring balance to the court...

Most of what I see Obama doing is attempting to keep the massive expansion of executive and DOJ power under Bush the Lesser, while assuring the people that they won't abuse it. I can definitely sympathize on a human nature level that the Democrats saw the Republicans use and abuse unprecedented presidential powers, and now that they have the crown, they're in no hurry to give it all back.

Democrats/Republicans are both complete tools, but the scoreboard don't lie; 4 Democratic appointees voted against Citizens United, 5 Republican appointees voted for it and against Stare Decisis.