Obama's War on the First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I'm pretty certain that having the Department of State Security Homeland Security goons, ably assisted by the Maryland State Police,[1] conduct a pre-dawn raid on a reporter and seizing her notes qualifies as "abridging".

The Stasi DHS conducted the raid apparently because the reporter had the temerity to write bad things about Federal Air Marshals. Besides having no discernible purpose to what they do, the Air Marshals had been lying to Congress[2] and the reporter was covering that.

Which apparently upset the DBP and so they did what all such fascist organizations do: They conducted a pre-dawn raid.

There was a time when middle-of-the-night police raids were regarded as things done in totalitarian countries. Such things did not happen in free states. But the Wars on Drugs and Terror have been boiling away our liberties and protections. Judges sign off on middle-of-the-night raids. Cops dress up in full battle-rattle to go raid the home of a reporter.

We are just about there, folks. Our country has just about finished converting the Constitution into a meaningless text that is praised in public and then ignored in practice.[3] We say we have a First Amendment, but freedom of speech and freedom of the press have shrunken to the point that the Founders would not recognize them. We say we have a Fourth Amendment, but the NSA, the DEA, the FBI and others wiretap us and rifle through our online communications without a warrant. We say we have Fifth and Sixth Amendments, but the government has arrested people, including American citizens, and held them without bringing charges and without permitting them to have access to legal counsel.

We say we have an Eighth Amendment, which is hard to reconcile with a government that has practiced torture and extra-judicial killings.

We do not have a free country if the police leave most of us alone. That's akin to not being shat on by birds-- just because you haven't been pooped on doesn't mean the birds are forbidden to do so.

Our Constitution means very little anymore. Either we do something about it,[4] or we learn to live in a state where freedom is just another meaningless worship word.

(H/T)
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[1] The MSP has a long track record of goonish behavior.
[2] Lying to Congress is only a crime if the witness plays professional sports. It seems to be OK if a witness works for the government.
[3] Much like people who pervert the actions and words of Jesus into license to war, murder and plunder.
[4] We can start by kicking out the statists in Congress. You know how they are.