kelley wrote:
> well, the right to not have your home invaded by the cops and illegally
> searched are a couple. and given that this was recognized by a judge
> pretty quickly --that the cops violated those rights in my case recently
> --they can no longer nail me on a felony.
I don't think anyone would advocate a left campaign to repeal the bill of rights -- but I think it is very difficult to make the point (given the paper existence of that bill of rights) that millions of people do not in fact enjoy the protection in fact that they have on paper -- and the prohibition of unreasonable seizures and searches is continually ignored for huge sectors of the population.
And under conditions of political instability (that is, under precisely those conditions that we are hoping will arist) that right will be ignored for the bulk of the population. (Lincoln did suspend the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War.)
> that charge was dropped even at
> the arraignment. given that they were operating on the basis of hearsay,
> there's another one. [no reasonable cause buttressed by the fact that there
> was no crime/evidence found that they came looking for]
>
> so i can sue them for false arrest, police misconduct and brutality for
> slamming me around for the heck of it. psychological harm to my son and i,
> blah blah blah. i can sue them because of the constitution.
This is not good: you make the leap from a specific right supposedly guaranteed in one amendment to the constitution to "The Constitution." With Doug's reference to NLR I now remember reading Dan Lazare's NLR article -- and he is correct that the U.S. Constitution as it stands makes major democratic reforms (including any radical progressive reform of the Constitution itself) virtually impossible. In fact, the Constitution seems to endlessly proliferate (or at least make possible the endless proliferation) of pointless reforms that in any case can't be won unless they are won before the effort to win them starts: e.g., campaign finance reform, one of the most idiotic of such wild goose chases.
> i don't want
> to get rid of it any more than i want to get rid of food stamps.
Two wholly independent issues with no mutual interaction: governmental services and the police power of the state. (Well, *no* mutual interaction is a bit too strong.)
Carrol