Daily Archives: 1 June 2018

An Argument

Posted on by
Reply

…for leaving the European Union altogether.

By openly invoking the role of investors, financial markets and the defense of the eurozone in his speech on Sunday, the president [Italian President Sergio Mattarella] lends credence to the populist argument that Italy has become the battleground in a war between the international establishment and national democracies. Even if populists win the elections, their supporters believe, they will never be allowed to hold power for fear that they would oppose the dogma that dominates the eurozone.

That speech was his rationalization for his decision to block the coalition of the two parties who one the last national elections from forming a government.  With that speech, he demonstrated the fact of the Italian peoples’ belief.

And this from European Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources Günther Oettinger:

…markets will teach Italians how to vote….

And German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s

comparison between Italy and Greece is an unveiled threat: Italians had better toe the line, or they will not be spared what the Greeks have been going through.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors have this one right.

[W]hat is happening in Rome is not only about the future of the euro. It has also to do with the state of democracy, in Italy and in Europe. Discussing and questioning the governance of the eurozone, as the Italian right-left populist coalition wished to do, should not be a taboo in mature democracies.

But national sovereignty be damned, and to hell with democracy and what petty voters want.  That’s the elitist EU attitude.  The worthies of EU governance Know Better.

This is what the Italian people need to think very seriously about in the coming national elections.

A Concept of Privacy

Posted on by
Reply

Personal privacy and protections against warrantless searches got a boost from the Supreme Court earlier this week.

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that police need a warrant to search vehicles parked at private homes, the second time this month the justices rejected government arguments for expanding the “automobile exception” to Fourth Amendment rules against unreasonable searches.

The case at hand involved a stolen motorcycle parked in the driveway of a private residence and protected from the elements (and perhaps (even probably) from being seen by police) by a tarp.  A police officer recognized from Facebook postings the residence, saw the fact of a motorcycle under the tarp, entered the property, lifted the tarp, and looked over the motorcycle—all without a warrant.

Writing for the Court in an 8-1 decision, Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote

Just like the front porch, side garden or area “outside the front window,” the driveway enclosure where Officer [David] Rhodes searched the motorcycle constitutes [the area where] activity of home life extends….

And

Given the centrality of the Fourth Amendment interest in the home and its curtilage and the disconnect between that interest and the justifications behind the automobile exception, we decline Virginia’s invitation to extend the automobile exception to permit a warrantless intrusion on a home or its curtilage[.]

Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissenter.

…the officer should have been permitted to search the motorcycle visible in the driveway, just as he could have were it parked in a public street. “Officer Rhodes’s brief walk up the driveway impaired no real privacy interests,” he wrote.

Surprising out of Alito; it seems he doesn’t completely understand curtilage or of privacy.  Notwithstanding, I’d further curtail the motor vehicle exception* allowing warrantless searches to bar such from motor vehicles parked on the street in front of the vehicle owner’s residence (or beside it in the case of a corner lot) or parked in an apartment complex’s parking lot near the vehicle owner’s apartment or in the apartment renter’s designated parking slot.

 

*The motor vehicle exception to the requirement for search warrants allows warrantless searches based on a prohibition era ruling that motor vehicles were too mobile and could be moved before a warrant could be obtained.  That ruling was itself erroneous IMNSHO because it assumed that the police were incapable of keeping a motor vehicle under surveillance until the warrant arrived.