Welcome to 1984. Or Stalinist Russia. Or Mao’s China.
Really.
Between this and this and this and this, do we even have any individual rights at all? From the first (and latest) link:
But here’s the twist: The prosecutors say that they can’t be sued for anything they do in their official capacities, even framing suspects.
It is not an argument outside the legal mainstream. The federal government, a majority of states and thousands of prosecuting attorneys are supporting the proposition that prosecutors must receive absolute immunity for their actions at trial to do their jobs properly. And that extends, they say, to any investigative work they do before the suspect is charged.
[...]
There is no “free-standing due process right not to be framed,” Deputy Solicitor General Neal K. Katyal agreed. Having to worry about a potential lawsuit when deciding whether to introduce certain evidence, Katyal said, might cause prosecutors to “flinch” from their duties.
Oh. My. Gawd.
Posted by Steven M Nielson on November 5, 2009 at 9:17 am
This is what happens when we give government total control over our lives. In Orwell’s 1984 people simply disappeared… It is quickly becoming our own reality.
From personal security (the topic of your post today) to personal rights (the topic of your Canada story) to personal health (the topic of your recent healthcare support), the government has no place in being involved – unless you surrender your rights to them. Once you do this, as you say, we have surrendered our individual rights and they will indefinately cesae to exist.
It seems as if you are starting to think like a Libertarian, not a left of democrat “progressive”. Welcome to the show… it only gets worse from here :/
Posted by bluelyon on November 5, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Here’s the deal. I am very much a civil libertarian. I believe in what the Constitution has set forth and in what it declares to be its purpose: “to insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
That means, the individual has rights that the government cannot take away. It also means that the government has certain obligations to US to “promote the general welfare” which means, we are not all left to fend for ourselves with no safety nets. It means that we agree as a people to do things such as pay taxes to provide for cops, firemen, armies, courts, schools, roads, waterways, and yeah, health care.
We are social animals. We make social contracts for the benefit of all. That’s what good government does. What is happening now is not good government. And it certainly isn’t constitutional.
The Constitution enumerates some of these rights, and I would assume (but this may be silly of me) that a cop, or a prosecutor, cannot fake evidence, haul me into court, send me to jail on the basis of that false evidence, and then get away with it scott free. A poster on my Facebook page seemed to have no problem with this at all, and frankly, I was appalled. In this case, especially, there is clear evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, and they should not only be sued, they should be in jail.