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PERRIN LOVETT

~ Thoughts on Freedom and The West

PERRIN LOVETT

Tag Archives: rights

Disturbing News from the British Isles

26 Saturday May 2018

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

abortion, children, dark age, decline, England, freedom, immigration, invasion, Ireland, rights

Free Tommy Robinson! Free England!

Stefan Molyneux on the arrest and detention of the truth:

The arrest for “breach of peace:”

BACKGROUND STORY

With the Orwellian gag order by the Dishonorable, Un-English Judge Marson:

nimbus-image-1527355792731

And, that 2017 Twitter quote by Naz Shah, “Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.” That was real, not rhetoric nor a joke. She was serious. She’s a Member of Parliament. She still has the job, walks the streets, and is allowed to remain in GB. But Robinson is in a cage.

Far worse news:

The Irish Vote to Murder Babies

The people of Ireland are set to liberalize some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws by a landslide, two exit polls from a referendum showed on Friday, as voters demanded change in what two decades ago was one of Europe’s most socially conservative countries.

They actually voted to amend their constitution to refute the right to life for unborn children. This is progress for women and children. “Making history,” growled the Prime Minister. The “Justice” Minister called it “another big step out of our dark past.” The Minister for Children was an advocate of the vote – to take away rights and life from children.

Those Irish stereotypes come to mind for some reason.

The Queen has the power to stop this. Her failure to do so will completely justify the delegitimization of the Crown.

Nisi Populus Dei Nostri!

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Eric Peters on How We Got Here

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

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Tags

America, Eric Peters, Fifth Amendment, Fourth Amendment, rights

This weekend the moms got mad and marched on Washington. Well, probably not so many moms – they have families to manage. Mad women. Womyn. Unhinged, incoherent, blue-haired womyn. Demanding something. Razors or bombing the White House or something. Demonstrating their collective right to litter freely.

Peters launched his own protest against actual lost rights, specifically the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as applied to motoring.

America is in trouble because Americans got lazy. Not so much physically but morally. They began to care more about some passing thing than about the things that truly matter; the things that made America unlike other places.

Better than other places.

Things like principles; the plain meaning of words. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments, especially. Which were (past tense deliberate) laws written to articulate and protect principles that matter.

…

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No clovers. EPAutos.

Worth a read. And we’re only some 30 or so years into this madness. There is still time to reverse it. That is, if we care to. This will require getting off the mental couch. Ours, not the blue-hairs’ “mental” couch.

This Will Not End Well

12 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

ethics, rights, robots, technology

Either for us or for them.

A European Parliament committee has voted in favor of a draft report that proposes granting legal status to robots, categorizing them as “electronic persons”.

The draft report, approved by 17 votes to two and two abstentions by the European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs, proposes that “The most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations, including that of making good any damage they may cause.”

…

The report also calls for robot definitions and subcategories to be proposed based on the device’s autonomy, making certain categories with higher autonomy more responsible for their actions.

“Whereas in the scenario where a robot can take autonomous decisions, the traditional rules will not suffice to activate a robot’s liability, since they would not make it possible to identify the party responsible for providing compensation and to require this party to make good the damage it has caused,” the report reads.

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RT.

Humans don’t get along with each all that well. Imagine competing with something smarter, faster, stronger, and not bound by foolishness or other emotion. Or don’t imagine it. You’ll be living it in a matter of a few short years.

And, that this comes from the idiotic EU is disturbing but almost makes sense. No doubt, they will welcome their new robot masters. I will too – with a shotgun.

Time will tell. Developing … rapidly.

Firearms Ownership: A Universal Right

18 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

America, Constitution, Dred Scott v. Sandford, firearms, freedom, government, gun control, guns, law, Miller, rights, Second Amendment, The People

The elites and the gun grabbers are desperately counting on racial and other divides in order to exact more gun control, more people control, on the population. The problem, for them, is that we are not so divided as they would like.

Gavin Long, the racist who killed three police officers in Louisiana this weekend had a history of hating “crackers”. However, that did not seem to stop him from shooting and killing black and white officers alike. Even he wasn’t divided; he just saw blue targets. Some would surely love to pounce on these murders to further freedom controls. Hussein Obama wants the police to admit they have a problem. Gersh Kuntzman blames the “gun nuts”. Many will suggest, other issues aside, that blacks (and whites) simply are not safe in our culture of firearms. Facts failing them, they will resort to emotional appeals related to the spate of statistically insignificant but culturally damning shootings of late.

Their problem here, and it is a wonderful problem, with blacks and guns is that blacks have adopted the gun culture. Once upon a time firearms may have been the province of white males in the rural parts. Now, it’s everyone. Men, women, all races – everyone is carrying.

Many blacks astutely recognized the importance of gun ownership years and years ago. In 1867 Frederick Douglass hailed firearms ownership as one of the three hallmarks of a free man and his rights (“the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box”).

From local and state regulations in early America through the Gun Control Act of 1968, many control and prohibition laws were aimed at disarming blacks. One racist strategy was to limit the availability of cheaper guns, “Saturday night specials”, as these were frequently the only arms economically obtainable by blacks (and other groups of lower socio-economic status).

Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court went so far as to list the carrying of arms as a right blacks were not entitled to (as they were not considered citizens). In relegating blacks to either second-class or chattel status, Roger Taney reasoned:

More especially, it cannot be believed that the large slaveholding States regarded them as included in the word citizens, or would have consented to a Constitution which might compel them to receive them in that character from another State. For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State.

Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393, 416-417 (1857)(emphasis added).

The grabbers and the intellectually lazy of the legal education profession for decades overlooked this enumerated right in Scott and as set forth similarly in other cases in favor of a simplistic reading of Miller (1939). I recall reading once in a Constitutional Law book a footnote – the only mention given the Second Amendment – that stated Miller was the only Second Amendment case in history. As the Court did not expressly affirm absolute firearms rights therein, the 2A didn’t confer an individual right and was barely a part of the Constitution.

My reading of Miller, as poor an opinion as Scott, always led me to believe the Court had affirmed an individual right to keep and bear military-grade weaponry. The gun Miller possessed, a saw-off shotgun, was determined to be of no military value despite the use of such guns, martially, for centuries. The short-barreled shotgun has continued to see combat since – most notably perhaps in the tunnels of Vietnam.

It also struck me as interesting that people could lawfully possess weapons of war but might be precluded from possessing “ordinary” arms. If one has a right to a battlefield rifle or a machine gun, what was the harm in owning a bird gun or a .22 plinker?

shotgun-3-1245333-639x360

George Gardner.

Subsequent rulings, this Century, have definitively settled the matter though in a shaded fashion which leaves open the possibility of state meddling.

They want to meddle and they want it badly. Evidence and sound logic ever eluding them, they continue to exploit instances of misfortune and fickle public sentiments. It is a joy and a wonder that their efforts are failing as more and more people wake up. Black, white, yellow, red – all are universally entitled to universal rights, which the left hates and opposes with universal fury.

An armed society is a polite society – for everyone.

What is Gun Control?

27 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

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Tags

America, bigots, Christians, CIA, concealed carry, crime, firearms, freedom, government, gun control, law, liberals, North Carolina, racists, rights, Second Amendment, Syria, terrorism, Texas, The People, The West, War, white people

Gun control…

For some it’s about taking advantage of tragedy and belittling those they hate. I almost didn’t include this first story due to the inherently bigotry and low-brow “journalism” behind it. Still, here it is. A woman in Texas, a self-described Second Amendment proponent and gun owner, committed an atrocious crime (the facts of which I don’t have and don’t want) – she apparently murdered her own daughters after an argument. The woman was also shot and killed by the police. Three women dead for no good reason – terrible.

Enter Helen Thompson writing on American News X. Thompson offered up an assessment of the crime in terms both racist and anti-Christian.

Too bad for Christian Christy Byrd Sheats two daughter’s, 17 and 22, Sheats had a gun with which to “protect her family.” That gun was used to gun down both girls in the street after a family argument.

Sheats was then killed by police after refusing to drop her weapon, literally bringing home the insanity of the famed phrase “from my cold, dead, hands.”

Note the immediate description of the shooter as a Christian. Would Thompson dare describe a Muslim terrorist as a Muslim terrorist? I think not. I did a quick Googling of “Helen Thompson” and “Muslim” and the first thing I saw was Thompson berating Donald Trump for trying to “initiate a Muslim witch hunt”. I guess witch hunts aren’t even for witches anymore – just Christians.

Thompson continues:

This woman appears to be the poster child of white, GOP America. She praised her religion, loved veterans and country music, praised Ronnie Reagan and George W., and loved her guns. She was a Texas resident, originally from Alabama. This woman literally reeked of right wing Americana — of normal, gun-loving life. She loved her grandmother, had been bitten by a black widow, and basically, seemed to love life and her children.

The white America. Would Thompson ever write about one of the thousands of murders committed by blacks each year (47% of total murders vs. 10% of the population)? No. It’s just a white, Christian, all-American kind of thing. Y’all wouldn’t understand.

Thompson didn’t even call for more gun control beyond her ridicule. “No good guy with a gun stopped this senseless murder by a ‘good guy’ with a gun,” she ranted – what a tired, worn, anecdotal, and worthless “argument”. If not even true in this case – the police officer “good guy” used a gun to stop the white, Christian bad gal.

Maybe some of the problems the left has with guns in America comes more from a hatred of America and its people than from a hatred of guns. These cretins, seething in their hatred, want the government to disarm all the white Christians – and everyone else of decent persuasion.

I have no use for the government at all. Some people on “my side” do. Droves of my friends boast about obtaining their concealed carry permits. Actress Kelly McGillis just joined the ranks of the permitted carriers following an attack at her North Carolina home.

I like that they have armed themselves in a world seemingly gone mad but I do not like the way they have done it. Why a permit from the state? I know it’s the law in most places. I understand that. Most people who get the permits are law-abiding. It’s a law that shouldn’t be abided by – or exist. Why should there be permits for the exercise of the right to carry anyway? Rights do not require permission slips.

I sympathize with and applaud Mrs. McGillis’s decision to arm and defend herself. I found it odd though that she took the measure following a home invasion. North Carolina does not require a permit of any kind to defend oneself at one’s home. I realize she obviously wants protection outside her house too. Thus the permit. And, thus, my problem.

Running to the government for permission to protect one’s life is little different in my mind to running to the government to prohibit others from protecting themselves. Either way, the government is not the answer. Usually, it’s the problem.

In a sense everyone wants reasonable “gun control”. Some, like Thompson, would have the state “control” guns by banning them from white, Christian hands at least. Gun owners generally favor the responsible, personal “control” of the individual firearm. If, to them, that means acquiescing to a state law, then they do it. Either way it’s the state, the state, the state. How about some gun control for the state itself?

In addition to regulating firearms, the government has a long history of widely distributing them, usually with terrible consequences. Most of government works like that – they find a small problem and come up with a solution that creates a bigger problem. I suppose it justifies their existence. I don’t see the need.

A few years ago the ATF was caught red-handed selling and then giving guns to Mexican drug cartels and to criminals. Some of those guns came back, fast and furious, and were used to kill Americans. The ATF isn’t alone. They are novices compared to the CIA. The “intelligence” agency has taken to giving arms to Syrian “rebels”. Many of those weapons were stolen and ended up on the black market – gun show of choice for terrorists. And, you guessed it, some of those arms have killed Americans. By arming one side (maybe more) of this conflict which does not concern the U.S. the government helps generate more angry “refugees” who then migrate to the West for various purposes – some for aid and reflief, others for revenge and crime. Little problem, “solution”, bigger problems.

Government agent Joe Biden oversees “gun control” while exploiting “loopholes” at a Jordanian gun show. NYT.

The left tries to scare people with stories of white, Christian Americans wielding automatic assault rifles and rocket launchers. They want the government to do something about it despite the fact it isn’t a problem. The government does do something! It supplies “Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades” to rebels and then to the black market and to terrorists. Nice, huh?

Another of the left’s arguments for more government control is that the firearms available when the Second Amendment was ratified were flintlocks and thus those are the only ones the people are entitled to keep and bear. By that logic, shouldn’t the CIA be running muskets and not rocket launchers? Maybe people like Thompson should limit their writing to quill pens. All beside the point.

How about less government for a change? How about limiting or banning the state’s use of firearms (and rockets and grenades)? Might that make for a safer society? As is, they give us freedom control, crime, war, mindless intervention, black markets, and terrorism; all that in addition to rules, regulations, taxes, inflation, oppression, etc. More government, more crime. Why have it or its controls?

After the Lord Mayor’s Show

07 Saturday May 2016

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

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Tags

America, banksters, Europe, government, Great Britain, human rights, law, London, rights, Sidiq Khan, The People, The West, UKIP, voting

The voters of London have elected a new mayor. Sadiq Khan is the first Muslim mayor of the Imperial Capital City, indeed the first elected mayor of any major Western Capital. The Drudge Report is aghast as is some of the right-ish media. I am not.

nimbus-image-1462625071308.png

Drudge. May 7, 2016.

I have been a harsh critic of the mass migration/invasion of Europe and the West by incompatible third-worlders, particularly by radical Islamists. I am not as pessimistic (realistic, maybe) as Taki; I think the problems are far-gone but not gone too far just yet. It was with this perspective that I analyzed the London election. Things are not always what they seem on the surface. As far as it goes, I rather like Mr. Khan.

First, consider the demographics behind the election. London is a massive city with nearly 10 million residents centered in a metropolitan region of nearly 15 million. Status-wise it is a combination of New York City and Washington, D.C. Until the rise of those cities in the previous century London was the financial and political center of the world (it still vies heavily for the title). London, unlike its American relatives, is an ancient city; Londinium was settled by the Romans in 43 AD. It was fully resettled by Island natives two centuries before William swept across the Channel (with a certain Lovett in train, by the way).

London was the capital of an Empire which controlled vast swaths of the Americas, Africa, and the East, near and far. Over the past five decades from its former colonies have come a multitude of non-Westerners. The City is now about half non-white, non-native British; more than 40% of the population is foreign born. This recent sea-change explains, partially, how a Muslim named Kahn could get elected.

Now, let us look at the man who was elected. Khan’s parents are Indian, by way of Pakistan (both former British colonies). The family arrived in London in the late 1960s. Sadiq was born in 1970, the fifth of eight children.

Khan, like many immigrants prior to the welfare/terrorism/”refugee” hoards, was a hard worker from an early age. He ran a paper route and worked construction before going to law school. After school he worked as a solicitor (trial attorney). His specialty was human rights.

Some of his cases handled as a solicitor have an American-sounding slant. In Bubbins vs. The United Kingdom, [2005] All ER (D) 290, European Court of Human Rights, (Mar., 2005), Khan successfully represented the family of an unarmed Britain gunned down by police snipers (sound familiar, America?).

Sadiq Khan.jpg

Khan, not particularly dangerous looking. Wiki.

Politically, Khan has held various elected and appointed positions including powerful shadow offices. Under the British model, the out-of-power party always maintains a shadow government, inactive but ready to assume operation unless or until called in via a political change, which can occur rapidly under the parliamentary system.

Khan is a British Liberal’s liberal but not necessarily a Muslim’s Muslim. His stance in favor of gay “marriage” earned him a death sentence and led an Imam to declare him no Muslim at all. It appears his politics will suit the current flavor of London well. If he maintains his defense of human rights, he may be a breath of fresh air.

Now for a brief glimpse at the competition. In Britain, as in America and other places, many cheer on “their” party and candidates with psychotic fervor. Labor and Tory are nearly synonymous with Democrat and Republican. The “conservatives” usually demonstrate one can’t spell “conservative” without “con”.

Against Khan the Tories ran one Zacharias Goldsmith (nee Goldschmidt). Like many Tories, Goldschmidt says the right things for the wrong reasons. London is a major finance center. Zac opposes tax increases, not because they amount to theft, but because he desperately wants to protect banksters. He has good reason as his extraordinarily wealthy family is in league with the Rothschilds. The Gold-Ss (whatever money-changing term in whatever language) also immigrated to Britain – having  crept in during the mid Seventeenth Century.

Whatever his conservative positions are, behind them one will expect to find that Zac holds them out of expedience and only to promote his family’s interests. He is of a class Cato once equated with murderers. He, unlike Khan, has never done manual labor and likely doesn’t give a damn about human rights. I may be wrong but I doubt it.

I have not in too deeply investigated the election beyond the news stories. If I lived in London and if I bothered to vote, I would have likely supported Peter Whittle or some other UKIP candidate – I relish throwing away a good vote. Between the two major parties the people seem to have picked the better man, certainly the lesser of two evils.

Now for the clean up if you happen to know what my title means.

Fake Sex, Lies, and Red Tape

13 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

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14th Amendment, America, Constitution, due process, Fifth Circuit, Fourth Amendment, freedom, God, government, insanity, law, Ninth Circuit, police, rights, Ted Cruz, Texas, The People, War

Perrin’s definition of government: (Noun) (originating around 10,000 B.C. in Hell) A collection of psychopathic control freaks hell-bent on minding everyone else’s business at gun point. This lowly institution is good for killing people, enriching bankers, and not much else.

Show me a government, any government, and I’ll show you a murder of monstrous, freedom-crushing maniacs. Meddlesome at best, Satanic at worst, an unfit concept long passed over by civilization.

Texas once had a law banning the sale of dildos – not making that up. One woman was actually prosecuted after holding a sales party at her home. Several adult entertainment businesses sued the State claiming a Fourteenth Amendment Due Process violation. See: Reliable Consultants, Inc., et al. v. Earle and The State of Texas, 517 F.3d 738, Slip Op. 06-51067 (5th Cir., 2008). The Fifth Circuit struck down the law and struck a blow for individual freedom (as corny a freedom as may be…).

The Texas Solicitor who argued (in vain) against the sale of rubber weapons of mass destruction was none other than Presidential candidate Ted “Glen Beck’s Man Crush” Cruz  – he the victor of the recent Colorado GOP non primary. I’m not sure how much tax money he wasted on the case (Federal Court ain’t cheap rent). He did obviously waste the time of the Judges, earning himself a 2-1 overthrow. Teddy declined to take the case higher. Lonely housewives breathed easier. Or, rapidly. Something.

The Fifth Circuit took down Texas’s law in as much because of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. at 578 (2003) (a la Bowers v. Hardwick) as because the government presented no evidence of any legitimate state interest necessitating such an idiotic, overbearing, busybody ban in the first place. More on legitimacy in a moment. The Court held: “The State’s primary justifications for the statute are “morality based.” The asserted interests include “discouraging prurient interests in autonomous sex and the pursuit of sexual gratification unrelated to procreation and prohibiting the commercial sale of sex.” Reliable, Id. at Slip 10.

Perhaps recognizing that public morality is an insufficient justification for the statute after Lawrence, the State asserts that an interest the statute serves is the “protection of minors and unwilling adults from exposure to sexual devices and their advertisement.” It is undeniable that the government has a compelling interest in protecting children from improper sexual expression. However, the State’s generalized concern for children does not justify such a heavy-handed restriction on the exercise of a constitutionally protected individual right. Ultimately, because we can divine no rational connection between the statute and the protection of children, and because the State offers none, we cannot sustain the law under this justification.

Id, at 11 (double emphasis added).

The State and Teddy came to battle with no factual evidence and a shaky “moral” legal argument. Morals are good. Their best in their place. Many are upset by the notion that one cannot legislate morality. A ruling like this is salt in their wounds. Their reaction is evidence of their own lack of morality, of a substitution of the Divine with the positive. God will handle matters related to morality. He does not need help from Texas or any other band of liars and thieves. Speaking of morality and Ted Cruz, Ted now advocates carpet bombing. Incinerating civilians is much more moral than selling a vibrator; God will surely agree.

The moment has come! Let’s look at the Texan idea that the state as an interest in banning sex toys in order to protect children and promote procreation (making up our evidence, if needed, as the State provided none). Law professors and black-robed priests prattle on about various standards of state interests – to be weighed against human freedoms or rights. Compelling, rationally related, important, legitimate – all artful when written out in a brief but still bullshit. I care, here, about the factor of legitimacy, real legitimacy. When talking about people (women one would hope) who use these…devices it becomes obvious they are the sorts who are not interested, at the time, in procreation. They’re looking for a little fun. They’re minding their own business behind closed doors.

Government is not content to leave anyone alone, that much is clear. What, really, honestly, is a state’s interest in procreation, children and humans in general. There is no guaranteed supply of people; no state is just entitled to subjects. In their absence the state would have no one to govern, to boss around. Therein lies the interest. Children are future taxpayers to the state. They are future speed trap victims. They are future cannon-fodder to march off to war. It’s immoral from the state’s perspective to withhold future victims, victims who might be needed to carry out such morality as a carpet bombing run.

The other week another opinion came out a different Court of Appeals on a different topic. Whereas the Fifth Circuit got Reliable right, the Ninth missed the Constitution on searches and seizures in United States v. Magallon-Lopez, ___F.3d___, Slip Op. 14-30249 (9th Cir., March 31, 2016). Different results for freedom but both cases highlight the hateful, demented existence of government.

In Magallon-Lopez the famously liberal Ninth Circuit sided with the police state. “The United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that police officers can lie to suspects in regards to a traffic stop — even when no violation has occurred. The ruling essentially gives police officers carte blanche to stop anyone they want for absolutely no reason — merely acting on a hunch.” Matt Agorist, Court Rules Police Can Legally Make Up Lies to Pull People Over to Fish for Criminal Behavior, The Free Thought Project, April 11, 2016.

The criminal subject matter of Magallon is as unpopular as that of Reliable was silly. Defendant Magallon was a meth peddler, unwelcome in most communities. Still, we play the cases we are dealt. Both actions revolve around universal rights and are only brought to light by their subject participants. Both demonstrate government will do anything to abrogate liberty.

The defendant, who did not and could not seriously contest the existence of reasonable suspicion for stopping the car, contended that the stop violated the Fourth Amendment because the officer who pulled him over deliberately lied when stating the reason for the stop, and the reason the officer gave was not itself supported by reasonable suspicion. Rejecting this contention, the panel wrote that so long as the facts known to the officer establish reasonable suspicion to justify an investigatory stop, the stop is lawful even if the officer falsely cites as the basis for the stop a ground that is not supported by reasonable suspicion. The panel concluded that in light of the information obtained during the stop, the officers had probable cause to seize the car.

Magallon-Lopez, Id. at Slip 2 (Summary)(emphasis added).

Magallon and a friend were suspected by the DEA of running drugs. This was known to local Montana police who initiated a traffic stop. The asserted reason for the stop was an improper lane change – a flat lie. The vehicle was seized and searched, meth was found, and the occupants arrested. Again, the police only knew that other police suspected the defendant of carrying drugs (these are illegal for the same specious reasons sex toys were in Texas). The arresting officers had no actual knowledge of real criminal activity. Therefore they lied. And, lying is okay as long as it is done by the government. Given this new standard I may have to refresh How to Interact with the Police – best to just live your life completely in a basement somewhere.

So much for the Fourth Amendment. The Court withheld a ruling on Due Process grounds (really, they did enough). No dissent in this case, just a concurrence which noted that Montana officers are statutorily bound to disclose their (real) reasons for arresting someone. Lying and breaking the law are okay so long as committed by servants of the state.

A “God-fearing” conservative desiring war over privacy. Former “liberals” selling out liberty for lies and lawlessness. No, one doesn’t need a government for this – an insane asylum would be enough.

Intimitated.org.

By the way: this is post number 450. Rolling!

Powers Vs. Rights

16 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

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Tags

America, anarchy, Articles of Confederation, Bill of Rights, Congress, Constitution, Courts, fantasy, freedom, God, government, law, law school, Liberty, Lysander Spooner, monarchy, Natural Law, politics, republic, rights, States, The People

This post concerns the force and effect of the United States Constitution and similar documents. I’ll stick with the U.S. version for simplicity and because most state and many foreign constitutions are based on the federal version.

The old parchment is divided into several articles and subsequent amendments. Each of these deals with different legal concepts. Article One grants certain powers to Congress. Article Two does the same for the executive. Amendment Three prohibits the government from sheltering soldiers in your house during peacetime. There are seven primary articles and twenty-seven amendments.

Aside from formal division the Constitution may be properly divided into two parts. Good Constitutional Law professors cover this in first year law school. The notice is generally lost amid a mad scramble to interpret Byzantine case-law and make a living as an attorney. The lesson is almost completely unknown outside of law and political theory education.

The first effective feature of the Constitution is that is allows powers for the government. In fact the Constitution created the federal government. In 1789 those seeking strong central political control replaced the Articles of Confederation which had loosely united the several (and wholly independent) states for a very few mutually beneficial purposes. The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, came along two years later as almost an afterthought.

The anti-federalists were concerned that certain fundamental rights needed official recognition and legal protection. Their theory was that a strong government, even of republican nature, could run roughshod over the freedoms of the people – like a dictatorial monarch. The amendments were added without much fuss as it was then concerned the new government, its keepers, and their successors would never seek to abridge such rights as freedom of speech, bearing arms, or freedom from illegal arrest and punishment. No one saw any harm in the additions.

The inclusion of those additional protections proved both prophetic and pointless. Those ten amendments and a few others comprise the other practical function of the Constitution – protection of individual rights.

In an ideal world government would only exist to protect people from those things they would be otherwise vulnerable to. The proper function of law and politics would be a careful balancing of the power of the government and the rights of the people. Powers versus rights. Some legal scholars still wax elegantly about the concept. Their conceptualization is largely just conceptual.

The new federal government lost little time in enacting various laws which curtailed individual liberty. The trend continues to this day in addition to the habit of constantly expanding the realm of federal authority light years beyond what the Constitution allows. The courts, allegedly the arbiters of the balancing test, have largely consented to this gross shift. They too wasted no time in inventing new authority for themselves – “judicial review” for example.

Any review usually ends up empowering the state. They are on the same team after all. The people, now bereft of representation and appellate avenues, are on the outside looking in. Lawyers gleefully await court decisions to tell them what laws really mean. The public, largely fat and ignorant, continues to support this corrupt system with astounding zealous patriotism.

As a result of all this what we are left with is a central government of unlimited power ruling over a nation of peasants who are happy to receive whatever liberty the rulers confer upon them. Every once in a while one or another branch kindly reaffirms some right. These are usually in trivial matters. However, the march to greater control never ceases. It works well as most do not favor freedom. Under the faux two-party system, most go along so long as their side wins on a somewhat regular basis.

In truth, they lose. We all lose. All except for the corrupt politicians and beaurocrats and their corporate crony enablers. The system is wrecked and bears nearly resemblance to even that central authoritarian regimes of the late seventeen Century let along an ideal state.

In modern reality ignorance abounds. Some speak of the right of the government to do some thing or the other. Governments have no rights as they are artificial constructs. Only human individuals have rights. These rights are natural, God-given. Governments can only protect or (more often) abridge those freedoms.

Others decry freedom outright. They declare the people have too many rights. For them, in their simple lives, they may be right. Argument for order and justice is lost on them and a waste of time.

There are those who indulge in the fantasy that a return to the original text and intent of the Constitution would usher in utopia. If this myth was anything but, I could agree with them. The federal government of 1791 would be infinitely better than what we suffer today. That of the Articles would be better yet.

The myth lovers assert the Constitution established a national government of limited scope. Maybe they are correct in theory. In real life no government worth its salt stays limited for long. Geometric growth of government is an iron law of political science.

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So it is with freedom and central authority. Mencken.

Lysander Spooner said it best of the lost war of Rights versus Powers: “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.” He elaborated: “A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.”

I find my view of anarchy criticized at times as belief in fantasy. It is said that men, by their very nature, cannot be trusted for long to maintain free, peaceful association and mutual respect. This, sadly, may be true. It, then, is also true that an honest man, desiring to remain free, cannot trust a government, any government. Belief in central authority is thus misguided. Tell you what, you have your fantasy and I’ll have mine. The rest of you have a choice to make: support powers or support rights.

Concealed Carry on Private Property (and Related Issues)

16 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Amercia, attorneys, concealed carry, Constitution, crime, firearms, freedom, government, gun law, guns, law, militia, Natural Law, NRA, Private property, rights, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Second Amendment, States, terrorism, The People

Americans love guns and with good reason. Every year over a million lives are saved in this country because we are an armed people. We have guns. No one is going to take them from us. Period. The fascist left knows this. The nitwit politicians know this. More common criminals know it. ISIS is going to learn it sooner or later.

In the wake of the ISIS attack in San Bernardino and the brewing Sharia in the Whitehouse the people are buying more guns than ever. This year black Friday was flat except for firearms sales. Broken record after broken record.

People are carrying their guns – everywhere, everyday. If you are a criminal or a terrorist in America, know that hunting season has opened. You will be safer elsewhere.

Daily, it seems to me, I hear more and more of my friends talking about securing a concealed carry permit from their state governments. In Georgia, twenty years ago, one out a hundred citizens had a permit. Now they are more common than driver’s licenses. My mom has one.

I am philosophically opposed to the concept of these permits. What other natural and Constitutional right requires a permission slip? Imagine if they offered or required permits for speech, worship, or freedom from warrantless searches. As a practical matter I have conceded this is one of the state’s games it’s okay to play. Just don’t take it so seriously.

Don’t get too attached either. State after state is beginning to follow Vermont’s lead. They are concerning to me these slips are unnecessary and illegal. It’s called Constitutional carry. Small matters really.

As part of the growing concealed carry discussion I have seen several mentions of certain private establishments that do not welcome armed patrons. Friends on Facebook vow not to support such places. I tend to agree with them.

Buffalo-Wild-Wings-Gun-Free

Buffalo Wild Wings.

A question sometimes posed to me is how much legal weight these business notices carry. The answer is “it depends.” One must consult the law of one’s local jurisdiction.

In Georgia a “no guns allowed” sign is just a sign. It has no legal authority. Every outside door at my local mall has a little picture of a crossed out pistol. Maybe this means long guns only? It doesn’t matter. The worst they can do is ban you from their property. That’s their right as the owner. I can respect it. However, for most men, being banned from a shopping mall is more of a reward than a punishment. The mall I reference is the kind of place I will only enter if I am armed.

There’s a much better, more upscale mall a few hours away in Charlotte. It hosts a fine Cigar shop and fewer thugs. The sign there reminds shoppers not to leave their guns behind in their cars. It is an indirect encouragement to bring them inside.

The law in North Carolina is different too. There signs prohibiting guns on private property do carry legal consequences. A violation of such notice constitutes misdemeanor criminal trespass.

If you carry, you need to know the law. Or, at least, some of it. We have over 23,000 gun laws in the U.S. (all of these serve as no deterrent to criminals and terrorists). Compliance or even comprehension is virtually impossible. Luckily it matters very little.

If you carry concealed and your weapon is well concealed, then no one will know about it. Many public places require passage through metal detectors. Avoid the hassle. Don’t go to these places. The visit usually features payment of a tax or some other unpleasantry anyway.

As for all other locations, just keep the weapon hidden from view and don’t mention it. Everyone will be happy. Mind that if you walk in the grocery store sporting an AR-15 on a tactical sling you may rouse suspicion even if you break no laws. Use a little judgment.

This all reminds me of a conversation I had years ago at an NRA national firearms law seminar (in Charlotte or Pittsburgh I think). These courses feature expect analysis of popular legal issues. There are as exciting as any other law program. Those of us from gun friendly state sir and listen to the horror stories told by colleagues from communist jurisdictions.

That particular time a friend from Massachusetts went on and on about how restrictive are the Bay State’s gun laws. During a recession I approached him laughing. I told him I visit New England regularly and I regularly carry a gun. I informed him I had found a way around all of the restrictive laws. “How?!,” he asked. I smiled and said, “I break them.”

He sputtered and said I could be charged with something. I slapped him on the shoulder and said I knew a good attorney.

Take my car for example. I have been stopped by the police maybe five times in life and not at all in the past ten years. I have never been searched. Any search would have found me heavily armed. But, it never happened. Odds are it never will. Compliance with unjust laws out of fear is a mere phantom. It may be safely ignored as Aquinas suggested.

Note that encourage not the breaking of the valid law. Rather, I adhere strictly to and encourage strict adherence the law of the law. By keeping and bearing armed, the people, the militia, maintain the security of the free state.

IMG_20151115_142637057

Molon labe.

Freedom: Waiving or Waving?

01 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

America, Constitution, Courts, crime, due process, DUI, freedom, Georgia, government, intelligence, law, Natural Law, police, reason, rights, The People, tyranny

Living in Georgia and having practiced law here a while I know something more about the legal and political environment of the State. In general, it is a broken mess. Yet, every once in a while, something good emerges from the murk of Peach State mediocrity. Recently, a federal judge held Georgia’s unconstitutional garnishment statute a violation of due process. Now, the State Supreme Court has aimed the same barrels at Georgia’s DUI law.

DUI laws, like drug laws (and most laws), are a failure. They do not deter dangerous driving. The continually high numbers of DUI arrests attest to this fact. The true intent should be to punish or prevent harm to the innocent. Other, ancient laws, grounded in Natural Law, can already do that.

The real purposes of modern DUI laws are three-fold:

One, they generate revenue for the useless government.

Two, they allow that government a degree of control over the people. In a free society it should be the other way around.

Third, these laws placate the ignorant, the state-worshipping, and those aggrieved few desperate for corrective action.

Failure aside, some hold dear to DUI enforcement (and not just the MADD moms).  Part of this is reasonable.  Most people drive and are potentially at risk of encountering an intoxicated motorist. Drunk drivers can afflict harm or death on others which is a bad thing. Other crimes are far worse but are much harder to understand or relate to – treason, currency debasement, suicidal immigration, toxic foreign policy, etc. Those evils are not quite so “in your face.” Still, if any crime is to be prosecuted, the enforcement must be carried out with respect for natural rights. The balancing is precarious but necessary if arbitrary tyranny is not a thing desired.

Georgia law states that by possessing a driver’s license and operating an automobile one automatically and impliedly consents to roadside sobriety and other tests in the case of a suspected DUI. An officer will read a driver an implied consent warning (they all carry little script cards) which, ultimately, gives the driver two choices. One, consent and forgo the rights against unwarranted searches and against self-incrimination. Two, refuse and suffer a suspension of the driver’s license – to the detriment of the right to freely travel.

The right to travel being universal, no state should issue permits for the same. States should also never place a person in a position of choosing which of his freedoms to sacrifice for the expediency of the government. There are proper investigative methods to solve crimes but usually the lazy state is dependent on the suspect’s cooperation or acquiescence. A man from a large metro-Atlanta county put an unusual spin on these concepts as part of his DUI defense.

John Williams was stopped in Gwinnett County for suspicion of driving under the influence. The officer read Williams his consent warning. Williams allegedly consented to a blood test which showed he was, in fact, legally intoxicated. The test would be the State’s primary evidence. Accordingly, Williams filed a motion to suppress the test results. He argued he was too intoxicated at the time, as demonstrated by the test results, to give his consent knowingly. “The defendant wasn’t actually capable of an informed waiver of his constitutional rights,” William’s attorney argued.

The trial court denied the motion but the Supreme Court held such argument must be considered given the importance of a suspect’s intelligent interaction with the legal system.

Catch twenty-two! Prosecutors are now in the position of arguing a DUI defendant was sober – sober enough to waive his critical Constitutional rights in a situation with serious (jail) consequences. If a man is so sober concerning important legal decisions why would he not also be sober enough to operate an automobile?

Caution Sign Isolated On White - Political Corruption Ahead

Thinkstock, Getty Images.

As a freedom advocate I do not hold much hope this ruling will have any lasting effects.  Trial judges and prosecutors could question the State’s witness as to whether he was satisfied, at the time, the defendant truly understood what he was doing. The General Assembly, ever eager to maintain control over its minions while providing them with the appearance of safety, could similarly change the wording of the implied consent warning.

I’ve seen such catches fall out in the government’s favor before.  I’ve heard a state psychologist testify a defendant was utterly insane.  So crazed he was a threat to society and himself and, thus, should be held without bond. So psychotic he lives in his own world, detached from ours. But, just for a brief second, while allegedly committing a crime, he knew and understood what he was doing. This happens all the time in America, a place from which honest reasoning has departed.

If the government maintains its war on intoxicated drivers (and it will), then it should rely on independently gathered evidence – evidence which does not involve the suspect’s compromised cooperation. Even better the state could concern itself with real crimes and the victims thereof.  If a drunk driver causes property damage or physical harm to another, there are many ways to address the malfeasance. Best of all, government being as failed as any of its laws, it could merely go away.

The best scenario will not happen anytime soon. Government’s hate to admit their failure just as much as they hate you and your rights.

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Perrin Lovett

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