Category Archives: Fourth Amendment

Two Fourth Amendment Cases Prove the Constitution Still Works

Saturday, 09 September 2017 06:34

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, September 8, 2017:

A nurse in Utah and a couple in Texas stood up for their rights as guaranteed to them in the Bill of Rights. The Utah nurse hasn’t filed suit, but the Texas couple did, and in both cases law-enforcement officials have been exposed and shamed for their illegal conduct. Both cases were aided with the help of videos taken of the incidents.

The first has caught national attention and has stirred national outrage. On July 26 Alex Wubbels was on duty as head nurse of the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit when a truck driver was wheeled in suffering from severe burns. He had been hit by a driver fleeing police and was comatose when he arrived in the ER.

Salt Lake City police detective Jeff Payne arrived at the hospital with instructions to obtain a blood sample from the comatose driver to test for elicit substances and ran into nurse Wubbels who knew the hospital’s rules: There would be no blood drawn unless

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Trump’s Pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio Sends a Strong Message

Saturday, 26 August 2017 19:48

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, August 26, 2017:

President Trump pardoned former Maricopa County (Arizona) sheriff Joe Arpaio (shown), the White House announced Friday evening: “Throughout his time as Sheriff, Arpaio continued his life’s work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration,″ the statement said. “Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now eighty-five years old, and after more than fifty years of admirable service to our Nation, he is worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon.”

For his part, the veteran sheriff was grateful but called his conviction the result of unceasing efforts by the Obama administration to silence him. In one tweet, Arpaio said:

Thank you @realdonaldtrump for seeing my conviction for what it is: a political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama justice department!

And in another:

I am humbled and incredibly grateful to President Trump. I look fwd to putting this chapter behind me and helping to #MAGA

Arizona Senator John McCain was ambivalent about the presidential pardon:

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Pew Research: Americans Getting More Comfortable With Firearm Ownership

Saturday, 24 June 2017 05:34

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, June 23, 2017:

Pew Research Center’s latest in-depth report on what it calls “America’s Complex Relationship with Guns” is revelatory. According to the report, released on Thursday, Americans are becoming more and more comfortable with guns and gun ownership, and less and less enchanted with more gun laws to fight perceived gun violence.

When 3,390 U.S adults were polled in March and April, they were asked whether it was more important to protect gun rights or to control gun ownership. In the year 2000, two-thirds of those polled then favored more gun control. Today, that has dropped to less than half,

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Joliet, Illinois is About to Write a Very Large Check to Elijah Manuel

Tuesday, 04 April 2017 05:28

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, March 31, 2017:

Interstate 80 bridge over the Des Plaines Rive...

Interstate 80 bridge over the Des Plaines River near Joliet, Illinois.

Joliet is a pleasant township of about 150,000 souls located on the Des Plaines River 40 miles southwest of Chicago. It describes itself as going through “a modern day renaissance” after having a near-death financial experience. Then-Mayor Tom Giarrante said three years ago this month:

I am proud to once again report that the State of the City continues to be … stable. As mayor, I will continue to work hard to keep Joliet financially sound by controlling our spending. It won’t be easy, and it won’t always be popular, but I will work to keep our checkbook balanced and we will not balance it by raising property taxes.

Three years earlier, the town had a $17 million deficit. It’s about to have another similar experience.

The Supreme Court last week paved the way. In Manuel v. City of Joliet, the court ruled unanimously that Elijah Manuel was free to bring a claim against the city based on Fourth Amendment violations conducted by Joliet police officers back in 2011. The opinion, written by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, gave Manuel the go-ahead:

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Supreme Court Unanimously Upholds Fourth Amendment in Illinois case

Friday, 31 March 2017 05:16

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, March 30, 2017:

English: Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the...

Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

The city of Joliet, Illinois, is about to find out just how costly its miscarriage of justice can be, now that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously last week that it cannot incarcerate an individual while he is awaiting trial, absent probable cause. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan was succinct in delivering the court’s opinion:

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Not All Travel Bans Apply to Foreigners

Thursday, 09 February 2017 06:45

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, February 8, 2017:

Embed from Getty Images

The federal government published the final rules on Monday on just how the Department of Transportation, the Department of State and the Internal Revenue Service, working together, can disrupt one’s plans to travel abroad:

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Court Rules That Those Carrying Concealed Are Presumed to Be Dangerous

Monday, 30 January 2017 17:36

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 30, 2017:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia) ruled last week that an individual carrying concealed gives up essential Fourth Amendment rights under the presumption that since he is armed, he is also dangerous.

The ruling issued on Monday, January 23, United States v. Robinson, reversed an earlier decision by the court’s three-judge panel, claiming that the Supreme Court, in two relevant decisions, concluded that “armed and dangerous” meant “armed and therefore dangerous” rather than “armed” as a fact and “dangerous” based on reasonable judgments surrounding the case.

A tip received by Ransom, West Virginia, police on March 24, 2014 that a man was seen

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Social Security uses “Nuremberg Defense” to Explain Why it Wants to Add Beneficiaries to the NICS

Tuesday, 27 December 2016 07:35

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, December 26, 2016:

The defendants at Nuremberg Trials

The defendants at Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Defense was developed following the Second World War in an attempt to reduce the sentences of those convicted of heinous crimes ordered by their superiors. The Social Security Administration (SSA) used a variation to deflect criticism over its “final” rules regarding adding names of certain beneficiaries to the NICS – the National Instant Criminal Background Check System:

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Social Security Issues Final Rules Removing Beneficiaries’ Gun Rights

Saturday, 24 December 2016 07:37

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, December 24, 2016:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced on December 19 that it had “finalized” its rules regarding who will have their names added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). This was after the proposed rules published in April received more than 90,000 responses, mostly negative, from the public. The National Rifle Association (NRA) opposed the proposed rules for numerous reasons and urged its members to protest them.

The new rules now allow the SSA to

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The Background Check System is Working Well – at Keeping Guns Out of the Hands of Citizens Without Due Process

Monday, 10 October 2016 19:48

This article was published by the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, October 10, 2016:

The Brady Campaign promised back in 1993 that a properly installed background check system, run by the ever-dependable and reliable FBI, would deny permission to criminals trying to buy a firearm. The latest report from the Inspector General of the Justice Department confirms that the system is working well: from 2008 to 2014, the NICS [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] denied approval of 556,000 requests for permission to purchase a firearm with an “accuracy rate that ranges from 99.3 percent to 99.8 percent.”

But buried on page four of the report was this:

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Closing the Loop on the Surveillance State in America

Thursday, 06 October 2016 05:07

This article was published by the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, October 5, 2016:

English: A surveillance camera at a traffic li...

A surveillance camera at a traffic light (mainly used to watch people)

In 2012 the Wall Street Journal published a 10-page warning about the surveillance state being enhanced through the use of license plate scanners. It showed that, with this final piece of the surveillance puzzle put into place, an individual’s private life can be built, observed, tracked, followed, and, when determined necessary, intercepted by federal agencies. Wrote the Journal:

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Feds Scanning License Plates of Gun Show Attendees

Wednesday, 05 October 2016 04:46

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, October 4, 2016:

As the Wall Street Journal reported, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has has a program in place since 2010 to use license-plate readers to read the license plates of gun show attendees in southern California. The theory was simple: compare those scans to cars crossing the border into Mexico and — voila! — ICE could find potential gun runners who warranted further investigation.

But the ICE didn’t do the scanning.

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Knightscope Robots: Enhanced Safety or More Invasive Surveillance?

Tuesday, 06 September 2016 04:58

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 5, 2016:

NXT Robot

Not a Knightscope robot, but close

Knightscope robots — one for inside work, the other for outdoors — have been under development for three years, and have logged 35,000 hours of testing and 25,000 miles of rolling through malls, parking lots, and manufacturing facilities. And yet, within weeks of the K5 outdoor model being released in the Stanford Shopping Center, an upscale shopping mall in Palo Alto, California, one of them couldn’t avoid hitting a 16-month-old toddler and running over his foot.

It was a poor start to Knightscope’s first major public contract with the mall, and they did the best they could to ameliorate the situation:

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California’s Gun Violence Restraining Orders: Grandpa Older, Armed, Therefore Dangerous?

Tuesday, 23 August 2016 05:51

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 22, 2016:

Embed from Getty Images

Richard Swift could be anyone’s grandfather. Born in 1949, he grew up around guns. He got his first .22 at age 12 and learned how to pick off rodents on his family farm in southeastern Pennsylvania. Said Swift: “Mostly, I was just shooting things that were there, like a stick floating down the creek. I’d shoot bumblebees if they settled on a limb … any kind of small, challenging target.”

When he joined the National Guard, he competed in marksmanship matches, and when he delivered cash between branches of a local bank, he carried a firearm for protection.

But now he’s retired and still owns that .22, along with a couple of other rifles, two pistols, and a pair of shotguns. And he has no plans to dispose of any of them.

And that makes Shannon Frattaroli very nervous.

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Rights Are Lost Slowly, Over Time, and Then All at Once

Tuesday, 23 August 2016 05:36

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, August 22, 2016:

Embed from Getty Images

German Pastor Richard Niemoller (pictured) wasn’t the first to discover how totalitarians complete their takeover, but he is remembered for waxing poetic about just how the strategy works:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

In the early 1930s, Niemoller supported Hitler. But when he observed the tyrant’s strategy of isolating his enemies and then eliminating them one by one, he opposed him. Niemoller spent years in a German concentration camp, and, upon his release in 1946, explained what he had seen with his own eyes:

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Justice Sotomayor Attacks Supreme Court Majority in Fourth Amendment Decision

Wednesday, 22 June 2016 04:34

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 21, 2016:

English: Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court j...

Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court justice

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s ruling in Utah v. Strieff that an illegal stop that uncovered evidence of criminal activity excluded that evidence from being used against the defendant.

There was no question that it was an illegal stop. In 2006, a police officer, after surveilling potential drug activity in a private home in Salt Lake City, stopped an individual exiting the house and asked him what he was doing there. He demanded his identification, and when the information was relayed to his police dispatcher, he learned that the defendant, Edward Strieff, had an outstanding warrant for a traffic violation.

That permitted the narcotics detective, Douglas Fackrell, to

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Senate to Vote on Four Gun Bills on Monday, Including NRA-backed Cornyn Bill

Tuesday, 21 June 2016 05:39

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, June 20, 2016:

English: The Bill of Rights, the first ten ame...

The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution

Although none of four gun bills, offered as amendments to a Justice Department spending bill, is expected to pass the Senate on Monday, special attention is being paid to two of them. Both infringe on Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, one by a little, the other by obliterating them altogether.

In her efforts to have the Senate expand the two current watch lists — the no-fly list and the terror watch list — to prohibit anyone on either list from being able to purchase a firearm, California Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein is presenting her “Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act,” which would

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Trump vs. Clinton on Gun Control & Second Amendment

Tuesday, 24 May 2016 04:29

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 23, 2016:

Embed from Getty Images

Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, perceived as far back as last October that gun control (i.e., control of people owning guns) would be a key issue in the 2016 presidential election, and Trip Gabriel picked up on it in his comments in the New York Times this weekend. Said Gross: “This issue is at a tipping point. You’re going to hear about it as a differentiator for the first time in decades.… Change is in the air.”

Gabriel is right about one thing:

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Driver Arrested for Remaining Silent, Sues Police and State

Tuesday, 10 May 2016 05:08

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 9, 2016:

At 9:30 p.m. on October 16, 2015, attorney Rebecca Musarra was driving in Warren County, New Jersey, when she was pulled over by two state troopers. Trooper Matthew Stazzone followed protocol and asked to see her driver’s license, her vehicle registration, and proof of insurance. While she was providing them, Stazzone asked, “While you’re looking for that, do you know why you’re being pulled over tonight?”

Musarra, aware of her right to remain silent, remained silent. Stazzone asked her again, “Do you know why you’re being stopped tonight?” Again, no answer.

Things then went off track. Stazzone said,

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During a Traffic Stop, What Happened When She Remained Silent?

Tuesday, 10 May 2016 04:58

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, May 9, 2016;

For years the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), through its FlexYourRights.com website, has been teaching what to say – and what not to say – during a traffic stop:

You have the right to remain silent. If you wish to exercise that right, say so out loud.

You have the right to refuse to consent to a search of yourself, your car, or your home.

If you are not under arrest, you have the right to calmly leave.

You have the right to a lawyer if you are arrested. Ask for one immediately.

It also teaches what else to do:

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