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Anti-Patriot Act Movement Expands
MFS! writes "Mount Shasta, California has become the latest city where the USA PATRIOT act is creating a controversy. This story at the Record-Searchlight describes petitioning by a local citizens' rights committee to order police to defy the PATRIOT act. To date, 3 states and 130 cities have passed legislation forbidding local authorities from cooperating with federal PATRIOT requests, not to mention the numerous businesses who are taking pains to hamper the Act's coverage."
the Native Americans have a treaty to grow hemp. It wasn't a law (although it should have been considered so)...
Sorry.
It is my understanding that the Supreme Court can't shoot it down unless there is a case presented to it that came to it through the appeals process. I don't believe they can dismiss any law as unconstitutional until it is challenged; I may be wrong though.
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The text of the Act is here, and there are explanations in regular English here and here.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
The 10th Amendment has been ignored by the Feds for at least the last 140 years. Hell, it goes back to the Whiskey Rebellion if you want to go that far back. Even with all of the other erosions of the Bill of Rights, the 10th has been the most decimated by all three branches of the Federal Government. The state is supposed to be stronger than the federal so that we could have a diversity in laws with which to experiment. This is not the case any more. With the way that the 4th Amendment has been positively raped over the years by no knock warrents, confiscation laws in which a person can have their house seized by the police in a drug investigation even if no drugs are found and all charges are dropped I find it as no suprise that someone finally got around to nullifying it in it's entirety. Dok
"You can't screw the system, but you can give it a good fondling." -- Too lazy to look it up
It's not just that they can find out what you checked out -- it's that you won't ever be told. When that federal agent hands that librarian the order (which isn't signed by any judge, by the way, it's the agency's discretion whether the order should be executed) to hand over the library's records because there's a suspected terrorist cell or whatever excuse they come up with, she or he is placed under a gag order. They can't even tell their bosses, let alone you. the only recourse that librarian has is a lawyer, which she had damn well better avail herself of, because if the FBI does in turn use that information the patron can still sue her for releasing that information. But if they don't then the libary board, the head librarian, and the patrons who had their reading lists snooped through will never know.
Yeah, the 9th has been hit pretty damned hard, but when you look at the fact that almost every single federal law on the books undermines the 10th by overriding state sovereignty, the 10th looks a little like goatse man. Dok
"You can't screw the system, but you can give it a good fondling." -- Too lazy to look it up
Well if everybody believed that, it would almost be true, no? In matter of fact, you're 100% wrong. Congress basically has the right to tax us, regulate interstate commerce, regulate immigration, coin money, deliver mail, grant copyrights, raise an army, and a few other less interesting things. Outside of that, everything else belongs to the states. I'll just quote the relevant parts of the Constitution:
Article 1, Section 8: (powers delegated to Congress)
Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The real quotation is:
When the people fear the government you have tyranny
When the government fears the people you have liberty.
--Thomas Jefferson
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...