Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 22, 2008

It didn?t take long for the Bush administration?s authoritarian assumptions to trickle down to local police agencies.

For seven years, the Bush administration has treated the Fourth Amendment as optional by conducting wholesale surveillance of electronic communications without a warrant. Bush should have been impeached and then criminally prosecuted for felonious misconduct. Instead, Congress ratified his actions after the fact by passing a measure gutting the Fourth Amendment.

So it shouldn?t surprise us to learn that local police increasingly treat the Fourth Amendment with open contempt. San Bernadino?s Police Department, for instance, has developed a tactic in which people are seized on the streets and detained without being formally arrested, charged, or booked. They?re simply held without recourse while police seek evidence to justify the detention.

Tactics of this sort are common in the administration?s ?war on terror,? and they?re becoming standard operating procedure for many police departments.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.