Supreme Court Approves Strip Searches For Any Arrestable Offense 747
sl4shd0rk writes "Taking a page out of the TSA handbook, the Supreme Court has voted to allow strip searches for any offense, no matter how minimal. The article cites these two tidbits from Justice Anthony Kennedy: 'Every detainee who will be admitted to the general [jail or prison] population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed,' and 'Maintaining safety and order at detention centers requires the expertise of correctional officials.'"
Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
We have gone insane in the United States. Our constitution is consistantly being ignored, and our freedoms are dwindling. This is just one more example.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:4, Insightful)
Bull shit. You're not going anywhere.
Occupy rule (Score:5, Insightful)
'Every detainee ... may be required to undergo a close visual inspection
That means the cops don't have any responsibility to find every weapon, but they can search you if they want to. If you get shived in lockup, that's your own bad luck.
Re:This seems reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
RTFA:
Again displaying their infinite law-and-order wisdom, the US Supreme Court has ruled that anyone arrested for any offense, however innocuous, can be strip-searched, even if there's no suspicion that they are concealing contraband.
He wasn't convicted.
Florence ... was arrested when his wife was pulled over for speeding (he was a passenger, and his son was in the back seat), and a check of his record showed an unpaid fine for an earlier offense. That record-check was wrong – the fine had been paid – but Florence spent a week in jail anyway, where he underwent the two strip searches.
He didn't commit any crime.
The ABA also notes that Albert Florence, who brought the original suit, was stripped-searched twice, once in private when "the supervising officer inspected Mr. Florence's mouth, tongue, armpits, buttocks, and genitals," and a second time when "he was forced to strip off his clothes in a shower area with a group of four other prisoners, all of whom were required to open their mouths, lift their genitals, and 'squat and cough' in plain sight of one another."
He was publicly humiliated.
Stop apologizing for the complete and total gutting of our rights.
Re:This seems terrifying (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes and no.
By itself, Jaywalking isn't an arrestable offense.
But let's say you didn't pay a parking ticket, so a warrant was issued for your arrest. Or let's go further and say you did pay the ticket, but they forgot to cancel the warrant, or let's say that your name is the same as someone else who has a warrant. Then it's get naked!
Or let's say you're protesting the horrible treatment of the 99% and the police decide to single you out to be beaten, pepper sprayed, beaten some more, zip-tied so tight that your hands turn blue and you suffer permanent nerve damage, and then they beat you some more, and then take you to jail and strip you naked.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a sad thing when countries that don't have laws written down heed them more than countries that have them in writing...
Re:Occupy rule (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, because beating you, pepper spraying you, zip tieing you so tight your hands turn blue, then beating you some more isn't enough. Now they can give you a full cavity search as well.
All for exercising your first amendments rights.
Way to go America. Land of the .... free?
Re:I would rather have that than contraband (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it's fair to compare a moment of slight humiliation at being strip searched to the very real risk of an inmate attacking a guard with a smuggled weapon.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony there is our watered down free speech laws (freedom of expression) are probably going to provide more freedom than will realistically be available in the US (despite your 1'st amendment) fairly soon.
Just to offer my commentary on US vs Canada law. The US is all about absolutes. You (supposedly) have a set of absolute, undeniable rights. In Canada, it's about balance and compromise. I have a right to express my opinions, but people have a right not to be harassed with hate speech. The theoretical implications of the Canadian approach seem worse than the US approach, however I think in the practical world they work out much better.
Further, I think the differences make sense when you look at our countries history. Down in the US, you folks had a huge war to get your independence .. lots of inspiring speeches and acts of heroism and such. You _won_ your absolute independence and are adamant about protecting it.
Here in Canada, we hashed out our independence in a series of meetings with the British. It was a compromise solution invloving a gradual transition where we would get a constitution and all the things that really matter for the day to day running of a country, and the British would still maintain a largely symbolic involvement in our politics.
An American would of course freak out at this. Total independence or death and such but it works for us.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
So many people here in the US have that "it doesn't affect me" mindset. It sometimes has me wishing it did affect them so we could get some real action on some things.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
How much has your life changed in the last ten to fifteen years? Is it better or worse? Mine is better. Much, much better.
TSA, Patriot Act, NDAA, free speech zones...
And you seem to be speaking in a way that indicates that you only care about yourself. Guess what? I care if anyone's freedom is violated, even if my own life is better!
Penn State's "kids for money" program... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about Juvenile Detention facilities?
PA had an issue where the detention facility was paying a judge to convict kids because the facility charged the state per kid, so, more kids == more profit.
In NYC alone in 2011, we had 50,000 arrested for smoking a joint, and every one of those arrests is a potential strip search.
There's an abuse of power already in progress, and we just gave them the ability to strip us literally, as well as strip us of our rights. 4th Amendment, anyone?
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
How about instead of fleeing, you contribute?
If you'd rather be 'noble' and stay with the sinking ship, that's your business, but don't insult the intelligence of the rest of us by making it seem that regular Joe Schmoes can do a fucking thing to change shit right now, because that's pretty obviously untrue.
We're getting ready to head into a presidential election where the "left" is actually center and the "right" is actually "holy fucking shit I didn't know the scale went this far". Unless you're one of those sick fucking people that worship the dollar, cheer on the death of the uninsured, and/or pray to God for the death of all the gays, the United States is quickly becoming quite inhospitable. I know people that have been spit on here in Wisconsin...why? Because they're in a fucking union. That's all it takes for someone to hate your guts these days...and God Forbid you signed a recall petition against our current Governor Scott Walker, because the witch hunts are in full fucking effect, up here. To quote one particular comment on an article I read a while back (reporting the fact that the recall signatures were going to be made public in a searchable database, what a great fucking idea that was) "Now all of us employers and landlords will be able to see who the parasites are." We have to fight tooth and nail to find out who is donating to campaigns here in this state, we don't know where half of the legislation that gets voted on in our legislature originates, but dammit, we need to make sure those signatures go public so everyone can find out where we live and harass us over it [dailykos.com].
How much more money should us 'little people' take out of our dwindling bank accounts to throw at this corrupt two-party system? How many hours volunteering and being involved politically should we tack on to our 80-hour work week? How long do we keep pretending that there's still something salvageable here?
Re:This seems reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
america has become a land of SEX PERVERTS.
let me correct that, if you are in a position of 'authority', your next role is to fight to have the right to strip search people and humiliate them.
yes, its about humiliation and not torture. a 'graceful' way to scare people into submission without all the bad aftertaste (so to speak).
tsa fondles and gropes passengers and now we give the sociopaths in blue the ability to scare you into submission by threat of this new tactic.
I guess spraying and volting you was not enough to control the population; we needed MORE tools to subdue the populace?
it sure does seem that this has a bit of the 'occupy' people in mind. lets scare the protesters so much that they'll think twice about showing their dissatisfaction at public gatherings.
piece by piece, we disassemble the laws and cultural norms that made this country GREAT. a once great nation, falling, before our very eyes. this is not hyperbole, either; its not even a slow cook of the frog. we're throwing the frog into boiling water and no one seems to really object but the powerless 'citizens'. and our voice has no representation anymore. the surpremes work for someone else, now, it appears ;(
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:4, Insightful)
The theoretical implications of the Canadian approach seem worse than the US approach, however I think in the practical world they work out much better.
Right up until you piss off the $cientologists, or the Mormons, or the Muslims, by saying something about their "prophet" that they interpret as derogatory (which you may well have intended as same) and they start to sue and harass you in court for "hate speech."
Meanwhile, the idea of being strip-searched before being put into prison seems to be an unfortunate side effect of the way we run prisons. If you haven't heard, smuggling items into prisons is pretty fucking big business. [statesman.com] And they get downright creative [oddee.com] about it. So if you're running a prison, then yes, you turn out to have a vested security interest in strip-searching anyone who comes in, whether they're there doing 10-to-20 or they're in for a short stint on failure to pay traffic tickets.
It sucks, and it's humiliating for those who are strip searched due to minor crimes or worse yet, court system fuck-ups (which is part of what this case had going for it to make a sympathetic plaintiff) but the alternative is the crime and drug gangs just having a few guys whose job it is to get arrested for running enough stoplights to smuggle stuff in to the leaders on a 30-day pass and pass messages back and forth from the outside too.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
> Essentially this ruling means that any police officer can take you and have you strip searched for any reason whatsoever (let's say
> you're arrested for resisting arrest) and you have no recourse. That's the country we live in today.
So, you're totally okay with being arrested and being thrown into a cage with other people (quite likely to be criminals) for any reason whatsoever, but having to take off your pants is crossing the line? In the story the guy was wrongfully jailed for a _week_ but the issue presented wasn't that, but that he was strip searched. Is it just me that thinks being lock up is vastly worse than having to strip? And that if you are going to put a bunch of people in a cage together that searching them first isn't a bad idea? (And to further that point, if you were wrongfully imprisoned with Mr. McStabby as a cellmate, wouldn't you prefer if he were searched?)
Let's call a spade a spade: the issue isn't the search, it's the bad laws surrounding them. The search makes sense for when you're locking up a bunch of people together (note that the decision applies to people entering the general population). The bad laws continue to not.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
So you had someone who was obeying the law, had documentation saying they were obeying the law, and even if the documentation was incorrect his crime was an unpaid ticket.... yet resulted in the type of personal invasion that one would expect violent criminals to receive.
Part of the problem is that right now there is an economic incentive to get as many people into the general prisions as possible (since they are privately run, and usually have kickbacks to the public workers at some level) so people are getting the 'full' treatment that the general population would not expect or believe is appropriate. I don't know about you, but in my mind 'overdue parking ticket that was taken care of' should not automatically result in 'stripped naked multiple times in front of people and have fingers shoved up my ass then 6 days in a mass prison'. Even if I did forget to pay a fine, I would not expect such a result until I at least went in front of a judge and was warned that if I didn't pay up I might go to jail. Usually they just slap a penalty on the charge.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:4, Insightful)
Rights aren't there to protect the well-off - they're there to ensure liberty for the oppressed.
Re:This seems terrifying (Score:5, Insightful)
So yes, if you are standing around doing nothing a police officer can come up and say ' you are under arrest' and bring you in... they can then not charge you with anything which means you can go. If you say 'I am not doing anything, what am I being arrested for' you can then be arrested for resisting arrest and even though there is no original charge you can be charged for the resistance, which pretty much comes down to 'didn't show officer respect they felt they deserved'.
It is because of patterns like this that the police in the US are generally best avoided unless you are the one who called them. Too unpredictable, too many ways around the laws, and too many people willing to protect them against non-police.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you're totally okay with being arrested and being thrown into a cage with other people (quite likely to be criminals) for any reason whatsoever
No, no I'm not. Locking people into cages is barbaric, and the fact that we do this to innocent people before they've had a single day in court is doubly barbaric. Triply barbaric is the fact that they have no recourse against their aggressor once they've been found innocent.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:4, Insightful)
I do agree with this, and like many Canadians, am thoroughly pissed off about it. The party in power up here also happens to be the worst for this. It's interesting, people joke about Canada being under British control, but the US influences our politics in an actual tangible manner.
At the very least, US big media is pulling some serious strings up here.
Re:Inaccurate summary/title (Score:4, Insightful)
You're dead wrong.
"The Supreme Court on Monday ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/us/justices-approve-strip-searches-for-any-offense.html?_r=1&ref=politics [nytimes.com]
Also, jails are where innocent, yet charged, people go. Prisons are where convicted people go.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:4, Insightful)
"I'm sorry I ran my mouth like this."
God sends little children to hell for lying, Ratzo. ;)
Everywhere has problems. And, you've been around long enough to see how the laws in the US have swung back and forth over time. We're in a pretty strong shift toward letting the police have free reign. But, like many shifts, the really far out stuff usually happens when the pendulum is about to swing back.
I'm hardly giving up and heading out. If everyone with "clue" leaves, then don't be surprised when clueless things happen.
YMMV, and if you figure that moving to another place is a good move for you, great. You've got the financial situation you can do it.
Besides, I'm sure you can find something to be grouchy and outraged about anywhere you go. ;)
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:4, Insightful)
Well said. The implications are for those entering a prison population. They are balancing the protection and safety of the prison population and guards against personal privacy. The needs of the many, in this case, outweigh the needs of the few ... Or the one....to paraphrase a line from an old Star Trek movie.
The need to strip search is for a arrstable offense resulting in detention in a prison facility. If you find yourself going to prison, you will be subjected to the search. Don't like it? Well, don't break the law.
Now, the bigger issue is whether he has a case for false arrest against the State for not updating the records properly. Keep in mind, this wasn't the first time he was arrested on this bench warrant. The police officer can not make the call at the time of arrest - that is beyond their power. And, a paper isn't going to protect him. He should be entitled for compensation because of the arrest. If the penalty against the State is great enough, they may elect to aim prove the process and provide a means to electronically verify the status of a warrant.
I worked on such a system for a county in PA. The validly of the warrant, assume it was entered properly, could be verified in seconds. Unfortunately, not all counties share their warrant data. In this case, it was a State Trooper who performed the arrest. Consequently, the officer was not affiliated with the county issuing the warrant.
Legalized Sexual Assault (Score:5, Insightful)
any police officer can take you and have you strip searched for any reason whatsoever (let's say you're arrested for resisting arrest)
Actually resisting arrest is a relatively serious crime. The guy in the case was arrested because someone else driving his car had previously gotten a traffic ticket. The ticket had been paid and the man had a letter from the court stating that it had been paid. So he was arrested for the crime of being a citizen in good standing with the law. Then he was strip searched twice once while with several other prisoners. Both occasions involved the visual inspection of his genitals and anus.
So the Supreme Court ruled that it is perfectly reasonable to arrest someone for absolutely no reason hold her for a few days and repeatedly sexually humiliate her. I use the pronoun "her" in this case to get you thinking about how you would feel if it were your wife or daughter though it should bother you just as much if it were your son. Imagine that your 19 year old daughter had gotten a speeding ticket, paid it a bit late, but paid it in full, and was carrying proof, was then forcibly taken into custody for a few days and required to spread her legs and hold open her vagina while an officer shined a flashlight inside while several others stood around, then repeat for her anus; and again before going to court where the judge orders her released on her own recognizance. This is what the Supreme Court ruled in favor of.
I will say this now. Cops will abuse this (hell they have doing this for years only then sometimes they would get sued). If they don't like you they are now allowed to sexually assault you repeatedly. This ruling was vague enough that cops will probably push the boundaries (they always do) and begin using penetrating cavity searches.
I hope it happens to each of these justices kids and grandkids.
Major error in summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I left and it's easy to do (Score:5, Insightful)
How easy was it to find work in Denmark without speaking Danish?
I'm seriously considering moving elsewhere in Europe. There's no legal obstacles for me, I'm British, so the only question is how easy it is to find a job.
(However, I do quite like the job & friends I have here at the moment.)
From what I've been reading lately, we're a lot more likely to encouter fascism in Europe than the US. Hungary is on the verge of enacting a completely fascist constitution. http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/120329/eu-takes-on-extremism-can-it-win-echoes-hitler-pt-4 [globalpost.com] EU is having to battle fascist uprisings left and right. Some would argue the EU itself has fascist leanings, especially in light of its entirely unelected leadership. Do a lot of reading before you decide...that's pretty much what I'm doing. All those austerity measures being pressed is just business and government screwing the people there. The people are entirely against most of what's happening all over EU. So we move from here and have a real, more mature battle there. Might be better to just stay here and try to change things on the inside. Plus, what if all the thinking people do leave the US and it does become ultra right wing fascist? Then we've got the most powerful army in the world going (more) nuts all over. The current reality all over the world isn't real pretty. The only place to go is maybe someplace that doesn't matter and has few people.
The EU is having to battle fascist uprisings left and right?!?!?!?
Since when? You must be reading an American-centric paper, HQ'd in the US and written in English.
That article is laughable and sensationalist, at best. 7%, oh no!
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not that I hate America. I love this place, warts and all.
I'm sorry but what you feel is not love. People fight to save/protect the things they love. They don't run from them at the first sign of trouble - Coward.
More than 20 states have passed these "Stand Your Ground & Shoot a Black Guy" laws already,
Wow, way to believe the media over facts and common sense. These laws are not stand your ground and shoot a black guy, they are stand your ground and protect yourself from severe injury or death. They exist because liberal whack-jobs were (successfully) arguing that if you had an opportunity to run (even with no guarantee of success) and didn't, then you were not practicing self-defense when using a gun to protect yourself. That if you could run but your wife/child/friend could not, you were supposed to leave them behind rather than protect them. Sure, in this case (Trayvon) a person may be attempting to use this law as a shield but that is no fault on the law, only the police who are enforcing it. If they were conned into believing that he was in fear of his life when he wasn't then that only reflects on them, it does not reflect on the law. The law does not allow the use of deadly force without the reasonable belief you are in immediate risk of serious injury or death. An unarmed man is perfectly capable of doing both of these things.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
The Church also strongly believes in freedom OF religion AND freedom FROM religion, if thats what "floats your boat".
That didn't stop you from forcing your religion on homosexual couples in California.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
The need to strip search is for a arrstable offense resulting in detention in a prison facility. If you find yourself going to prison, you will be subjected to the search. Don't like it? Well, don't break the law.
This isn't about prison (which is for convicted criminals), this is jail, which you can go to merely for being suspected of a crime. You don't have to actually break the law. You usually don't even get to see a judge or your lawyer first. Forty years ago this is something we would've accused the Soviets of and criticized them for it while saying that America is better than that. Now we'll get people doublethinking that it's freedom.
Re:I would rather have that than contraband (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in socialist Continental Europe where a friend of mine was arrested after beating the stuffing out of someone who refused to leave his house. The police took him to the station, offered him coffee, and politely interviewed him. He then spend the weekend in jail, where he had regular smoke breaks, cable TV, and three squares. No strip searches, pepper spray, zip ties, or mancho police BS. Can you guess how often people are stabbed in jail here? Or how often guards are attacked?
This argument that having someone fondle your ballsack is for your own protection is exactly the kind of nonsensical, fear-based thinking that allowed a whole country to blithely accept penning protesters in "free speech zones," indefinite detentions without evidence or trial, and submitting to having naked photos taken in order to board an airplane. Police are supposed to protect the peace--they are public servants--and in many parts of the world, they reciprocate respect, instead of demanding it through dehumanizing displays of power.
This case has nothing to do with protecting guards, or keeping people from running with scissors in a jail cell--that is what eyeballs, ears, and cameras are for. What the SCOTUS said was that your fourth amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure ends when a police officer decides to arrest you. The guy in TFA was arrested because the cop thought that he hadn't paid a fine--despite having documentation that stated otherwise. He was then strip searched not once, but twice, before spending a week in jail. For allegedly not paying a fine. That he had in fact paid.
This decision is a further erosion of the Bill of Rights, plain and simple. The government needs a court order to obtain a search warrant before entering your house, but can enter your anus for loitering--or damn near anything because a copy can always find an excuse to arrest someone. Worse, it has a chilling effect, because now protestors know that, after being pepper-sprayed and zip-tied, they will be strip-searched multiple times.
Let's see what the amendement says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The SCOTUS has decreed that the whim of a single police officer, for any reason he or she deems worthy of arresting you, rises to the level of probable cause sufficient to violate the security of your person against unreasonable searches--unless your consider peeking inside someone's vagina or under their penis for participating in a peaceful protest reasonable. And, as anyone from a small town can attest to, cops can find any excuse to arrest you at any time, and face zero repercussions for flagrantly abusing that power; they don't even have to charge you with a crime. Slippery slope? Try free-fall.
Humor me for a second. Imagine a cop in a foul mood and who needs to fill quotas for traffic tickets, so he's pulling people over for just about anything. Now imagine that your wife is driving you home and she is pulled over by this cop. He runs her license, and asks for your ID--which you're not obliged to provide, but you don't want to start any trouble. He runs your ID and finds out that you have an unpaid parking ticket and that there is a warrant out for your arrest. Fortunately you have a receipt showing that you paid the fine, but the cop isn't buying it because the computer says otherwise. And you're black, so that probably isn't helping. The next thing you know, you're naked in a room full of strangers, spreading your ass cheeks apart while a stranger with a badge takes a good long look at your taint. Now imagine that this happens a second time, because they decide to move you from one jail to another during the entire week that you spend in jail. You're already in custody, but hey, "they've been doing it for decades now," and it's better safe than sorry.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
For every person actively cheering this shit on, there are 10 people sitting there watching them do it and not saying a fucking word.
Look at how much power the ultra-religious whackjobs wield in the modern-day GOP right now. They're busily working on rolling back abortion, worker's rights, sex-ed, and the moderate conservatives are just sitting there happily going along, too afraid of the evangelicals to dare standing against them. Shit is fucked up at almost level of government in this country, even down to the municipal level [wikipedia.org], and our legislators are more worried about making sure that a woman has to go through "counseling" to make sure she wasn't "coerced" into getting an abortion. Planned Parenthood offices are now getting firebombed right here in Wisconsin [wausaudailyherald.com]. Where are all the moderate Republicans going on record decrying this shit? Where are all the moderates saying "Hey, crazy religious nuts, knock it the fuck off!"
Few and far between. Better to tacitly support this idiocy and "beat that 'Muslim' Barack HUSSEIN Obama!!" than to have the courage to actually call out the fucking crazies, right? Why the hell else is someone like Rick Santorum even still in the race? The guy thinks women should be grateful for a pregnancy, even if it is the result of a rape. [guardian.co.uk] Where is all the outrage on the right for that bullshit? In the right-wing media? Yeah, nowhere, because again, better to stand united with the crazies than be branded a "soshulist" or "librul" , God Forbid, a "Dumbocrat"...
It's a question of priorities, not bravery. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that I hate America. I love this place, warts and all.
I'm sorry but what you feel is not love. People fight to save/protect the things they love. They don't run from them at the first sign of trouble - Coward.
Thing is, I suspect that PopeRatzo (among others) loves himself, his family, and his freedoms more than the abstract notion of "nation", especially when that nation is changing for the worse, relatively rapidly and in long-term ways that will be hard to change back.
It's not a question of courage. It's a question of smarts -- should I stay and try to turn a tide of stupidity that could very well cost me my life (at least figuratively), or should I arrange for my loved ones and myself to have a place of safety and greater relative freedom somewhere else? And, mark you, this particular SCOTUS ruling isn't the first sign of trouble; there are signs all over that things aren't going quite right.
Sometimes it's just smarter to get out of the way of an avalanche.
Now, if you want to argue about whether the changes in the US constitute an avalanche, that's all well and good. But that's not what you're doing. Calling someone chicken for doing what looks to me like simple self-preservation and seeking that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that Americans love to talk about, that's just dumb. I sure don't think my great-great grandad was a chicken for leaving Germany and coming to the US. He did the smart thing, as clearly evidenced by the course of history for the next 50-odd years after he left, bringing his family with him. (And yes, that branch of my family would have vanished had they stayed.)
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I left and it's easy to do (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I left and it's easy to do (Score:5, Insightful)
The America you grew up in is the same as the one you live in now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Convention [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings [wikipedia.org]
Among others... I'd appreciate it if we stopped romanticizing our history and recognize that the US has pretty much always relied on force to get what they want (including going to war to get away from the crown).
That is the reality of American history: Shoot our way into getting what we want.
Re:I left and it's easy to do (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody forced anything on anyone. The mormons followed the legal, established process for prop 8.
In what world do you live in where passing a law doesn't equate to the use of force?
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you seriously trying to argue that religious people shouldn't be allowed to vote because it isn't fair for the non-religous people?
No, I'm suggesting that we call it what it is. If you vote to force your religion on people that is what you are doing. Deal with it.
Are you suggesting that no Mormons are homosexual? Or are you suggesting that no Mormons voted against prop8? I assure you that if you are both suggestions are false.
How did you infer either of those from what I said? Neither follow.
Re:I left and it's easy to do (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, the Supreme Court ruling specifically said he was still allowed to proceed in court for the wrongful arrest. They did not challenge that part. Granted, the ruling was abysmally poor otherwise.
Re:Canada Here I Come (Score:4, Insightful)