Duy Tran, newly moved into his home and flying his American flag, was confronted by the apartment complex manager. Duy said the manager
told him to remove the American flag hanging outside his home, because she deemed it a “threat to the Muslim community.”
Because patriotism is offensive. So just shut up.
Like a lot folks, I’m skeptical about the…accuracy…of the IRS’ lately claim that they can’t find Lois Lerner’s emails from before 2011.
My skepticism flows from a number of sources:
Note to those of you who believe the IRS’ claim: perhaps I can interest you in some beachfront property north of Santa Fe.
Quartavius Davis was convicted of robbing, in 2010, seven stores in and around Miami and sentenced to roughly 162 years in prison. His prosecutors based their case, in large part, on cellphone records that placed Davis near the scene.
The evidence included records of the cell towers to which their phones were connected when they placed and received calls, according to court documents.
These data were obtained solely on the basis of a claim “that the records were relevant and material to an ongoing investigation.”
The 11th Circuit demurred. Writing for a unanimous court, Judge David Sentelle wrote in part
[I]t cannot be denied that the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures shields the people from the warrantless interception of electronic data or sound waves carrying communications. The next step of analysis, then, is to inquire whether that protection covers not only content, but also the transmission itself when it reveals information about the personal source of the transmission, specifically his location.
And [emphasis added]
One’s cell phone, unlike an automobile, can accompany its owner anywhere. Thus, the exposure of the cell site location information can convert what would otherwise be a private event into a public one. When one’s whereabouts are not public, then one may have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those whereabouts.
…
There is a reasonable privacy interest in being near the home of a lover, or a dispensary of medication, or a place of worship, or a house of ill repute. [W]e do not see…Davis’s location outside his expectation of privacy.
And ultimately,
Cell site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy. The obtaining of that data without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation.
Yewbetcha.
A 4th Amendment warrant requires a showing of probable cause, a rather stricter standard than just the government claiming an interest. However, the matter isn’t closed with this ruling; the 5th and 6th Circuits have ruled that warrants are not needed in such cases. This points to an eventual Supreme Court case.
The 11th Circuit’s opinion can be read here.
I’m pleased to announce two new pamphlets, A Conservative’s Thoughts on Rights and Duties, their Duality, and some Implications and A 21st Century American Crisis.
In Rights and Duties I talk about our inalienable rights and our inalienable duties and their attributes as endowments from and by our Creator, as well as how they and the fact that they’re duals of each other, are a part of the fabric of our existence—both as those individual rights and duties and in the capacity of those duals.
Further, and just as importantly, our inalienable rights and our inalienable duties are in each of us as individuals; they are not in groups of us, they are not in the whole of us as a nation. Each one of us is possessed of them entirely in ourselves.
This, of course, has implications for the role our government, and especially the roles of “civil law” and “civil rights,” have in our lives.
American Crisis is a call to arms for all of us to become active and to rescue our Republic from its dangerous drift away from our founding principles of small, limited government; individual liberties; personal responsibilities.
From the pamphlet:
In the era of our War of Independence, governments, said the Conservatives of the time—those monarchists, forerunners of today’s Big Government Progressive disciples—exist first and above the people, and the rights of the people are those granted by these governments.
“The time’s Liberals, though—the men and women of our War, of our Founding, and of our earlier history—had a different view. A man, they held, has rights that are indivisible from him because they are inherent in his humanity, in his very existence, as endowments from his Creator. Government, they held, exists to protect these rights and for no other purpose.
And
The blows we struck in 2010 were a worthy start, but they were only a start. The progress we added in 2012 has been inadequate to our cause. But we are not finished. Wisdom is not the purchase of a day.
See the links to the right or my Books page for information about how to get them in either Kindle or epub (Nook-compatible) format.
I hope you get as much out of them as I enjoyed putting into them.
Thailand’s new ruling junta said Thursday it has no desire to “cling to power” but also has no clear timeframe for when it will allow free elections.
“We will definitely have an election,” said Lt General Chatchalerm Chalermsukh, the army’s deputy chief of staff. But he added, “this will take some time. If you ask me how long it will take, that’s difficult to answer.”
And
Several political figures, mostly on the pro-government side, were held incommunicado for a week and freed only after signing a waiver agreeing not to say or do anything that could stir conflict.
And
The military has said it will crack down on online speech it considers inflammatory.
And further from Chatchalerm:
Today there are still protests. It shows that some people want to create turmoil. So it’s impossible to hold elections at the moment.
Well, all right, then.