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Justice Department Shuts Down Huge Asset Forfeiture Program
HughPickens.com writes: Christopher Ingraham reports at the Washington Post that the Department of Justice has announced that it's suspending a controversial asset forfeiture program that allows local police departments to keep a large portion of assets seized from citizens under federal law and funnel it into their own coffers. Asset forfeiture has become an increasingly contentious practice in recent years. It lets police seize and keep cash and property from people who are never convicted — and in many cases, never charged with wrongdoing. Recent reports have found that the use of the practice has exploded in recent years, prompting concern that, in some cases, police are motivated more by profits and less by justice. Criminal justice reformers are cheering the change. "This is a significant deal," says Lee McGrath, legislative counsel at the Institute for Justice. "Local law enforcement responds to incentives. And it's clear that one of the biggest incentives is the relative payout from federal versus state forfeiture. And this announcement by the DOJ changes the playing field for which law state and local [law enforcement] is going to prefer."
"If only more people remembered our rights existed before the Government was founded, our rights do not come from Government."
What malarkey. "Rights" are a totally artificial construct, varying from Area to Area, and Era to Era. An Individual has no "Rights" whatsoever, unless they are those granted in exchange for restrictions on Individual action, and those are granted by... Governments. Were you Stoned when the Concept of the "Social Contract" came up in Fourth Grade?
Perhaps you are thinking of this Rhetoric:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Hint- This wasn't in the Constitution. Notice the use of the words "Endowed" and "Creator". This can't possibly be Constitutional by the eventual wording and interpretation of the First Amendment, so when they got around to writing the Constitution, they left it wisely Out. The original intent of the First Amendment was to prevent the _Establishment_ of a Church Of the United States, given that the Official Church Of England and the Church Of Ireland had proven to be brutally oppressive.
Those Rights that we do have, with restrictions, come from the Government founded under that Constitution, and that Constitution doesn't mention God, or unalienable Rights, because there are no such things. It was just Rhetoric.
Now as to the Constitutionality of Asset Forfeiture- that's touchy. The Abuses tend to happen at the State and Local level, and as such, restrictions are bound by the Tenth Amendment. In other words, the DOJ may no longer seize Assets, (This still has to go through the Appeals Process...), but Barney Fife still may.