Dakota Beacon

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  John Adams

We should all be aware that from our beginnings as a unique nation, founded in freedom, unlike any before it - a bold experiment in man’s ability to govern himself without dictator, king or emperor - America has always had her doubters and her enemies.  Those who would prove our premise of liberty “wrong” have always been with us, among us. They have appeared to be our compatriots while not sharing our belief in freedom. Our success has baffled some of them, converted some, but has hardened others to prove us wrong.  As you read the rest of our discussion of our Constitution, bear this in mind. Our Fourth Amendment has been falling to this contingent among us. It is up to us to draw the line and say, “no further - back up”.  

AMENDMENT IV:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Today we will be looking at an amendment which has brought the private citizen into conflict with government and law enforcement.  The Fourth Amendment describes one of our most cherished rights as free people - security in our persons, homes and property from warrantless searches and seizures.  The importance of this right cannot be overstated. And yet, many patriotic and otherwise “conservative” citizens have been duped into accepting some shocking violations of this precious right.  First let’s look at a few of many such violations and I’ll discuss the context in which this is happening.

The Founding Fathers wrote and passed this Amendment because of their recent experiences of a tyrannical government with the power to come into their homes, to search through their personal effects, to seize them and/or their property without cause or warrant.  This they correctly viewed as a mark of tyranny, and a practice which the free people of the United States would never tolerate. As we shall see, this fear is still justified.

Today we find that this sacred amendment is violated on a daily basis.  One of the culprits has been the iconic institution of the FBI. In the Clint Eastwood movie, Richard Jewell, the FBI uses a ruse to entrap Jewell and to gain his consent under false pretences and claims, to search his home.  This movie is worth seeing. I hope you will have a chance to do so. It is based on fact and is faithful to the truth.  Jewell’s mother, with whom he shared an apartment, later sued six members of the FBI as well as a federal prosecutor for violation of her Fourth Amendment rights.

As with most laws, there is no “absolute” with the Fourth Amendment.  There are six recognized exceptions to the protection of the Fourth Amendment:

1. Search incidental to lawful arrest:  If a law officer responds to a call and arrests someone accused of committing a crime, it is lawful to search the area within the suspect’s wingspan and evidence thusly gathered is admissible in court.

2. Plain view exception:  If, in gathering evidence authorized by a warrant, other evidence is in plain sight, this secondary evidence is also admissible.

3. Consent: Evidence found if a law officer enters a premises with the consent of a person of authority - for example, an adult residing there, any evidence gathered is admissible.

4. Stop and frisk:  A person may be stopped and searched if there is a “reasonable suspicion” that he is a suspect in a crime.  So, if there is a search for a person of a particular description, persons matching that description may be stopped and searched without issue of a warrant, but not those who do not match such description. Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” program, which allowed the stopping of someone without probable cause, was clearly unconstitutional.

5. Automobile exception:  This applies to all moving vehicles or vehicles capable of moving - cars, boats, helicopters, etc.   If there is probably cause to believe that evidence is inside such a vehicle it is lawful to search it without a warrant, inasmuch as the movability of the vehicle would mean the evidence could easily be removed.  This exception, it should be noted, would not extend to a disabled vehicle - without wheels, if a car, or an engine, or whatever, which would make it immobile on its own.

6. Hot pursuit:  If an officer finds evidence while pursuing a suspect, even in premises which absent such pursuit would be “off-limits” without a warrant, this evidence is judged to be admissible.

The above exceptions should be carefully observed and noted and followed.  A loose interpretation of any of them endangers our basic rights as American citizens.  They are carefully worded and should be used with consistency.

Another challenge to the Fourth Amendment is called “Civil Forfeiture”.  Property might be seized which law enforcement deems is “consistent’ with illegal activity.  Not only is the property seized, speculatively, but even upon failure to prove a crime, this property is retained - not returned  to the owner. Under this practice, a landlord could be dispossessed of his property because a tenant, unbeknownst to the landlord, is operating a meth lab.  The owner of a car might lose his property if evidence is found in it even though it does not implicate him. A business accused of a crime, might find that the government seizes all of their equipment - computers, etc. and possibly bank accounts  - a situation which could not only hamper the business, perhaps operating completely within the law, but possibly put them out of business.

In 1978, as a response to unauthorized, illegal wiretapping under the Nixon administration, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), intended to provide judicial oversight of surveillance with the intention of preventing violation of our Fourth Amendment rights.  It set up courts especially to rule on requests for such surveillance. Of course because this deals with surveillance and not matters in the public view, these courts needed to operate in a high degree of secrecy. Obviously many will have a problem with this departure from our established rights.

Following the attack on New York’s Trade Towers, September 11, 2001, Congress approved the “Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists” (AUMF), launching a program referred to as the “war on terror”.  Later that year they passed the so-called “Patriot Act” which authorized expanded powers to combat the threat of terrorism. President Bush used this as “authorization” to use wiretapping and other surveillance techniques in violation of FISA through the NSA (National Security Agency).  Although he was called out on it, it continued and was further continued under the Obama administration. The NSA was being given absolute access to all fiber-optic communication among virtually all of the nation’s telecommunications systems - which means telephone calls, fax, internet and email, texts and corporate communications.  Obviously this violates our Fourth Amendment. FISA itself states that it is illegal to use or disclose this kind of surveillance obtained under the act, making it punishable by prison and fines.  

We have discovered in recent months, during the impeachment efforts by the Democrat-controlled House, that FISA courts have permitted egregious violations and also washed their hands of judicial responsibility, simply asserting that they are “not competent” to judge requests and simply rubber-stamping them, relying on the “expertise” of the agency or person requesting authorization.  This means that basically no one is truly protected. Even the basic principle of not admitting hearsay as evidence has gone by the wayside. 

Our Fourth Amendment is foundational to our freedom.  There are those who would deprive us of this and all of our freedom - we have met them before in different guises.  In the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and even 60s it was communism. Now it is an assortment of foes including Islamic imperialism (the “Caliphate”) and the “one-world” movement (to which we can trace many of our other issues, such as “climate change” panic).  In any case, the immediate “need” for this kind of abuse of our rights has been brought about largely through increased and unvetted immigration.

We have always had those among us who violate the law and must be brought to justice by our law enforcement.  Until recently, however, basically until the heavy immigration, both legal and illegal, this has been handled without violating the rights of the innocent citizen.  Now we can expect a challenge to our rights daily, with the excuse that there is a need to spy on “terrorists”. We didn’t use to have terrorists in America. We didn’t used to need a FISA court or electronic surveillance only a few years ago.  America was a better place. If we want it ever to be that good again the first thing we need to do is to ask ourselves just WHY we need these vast numbers of immigrants. We’re not talking about genuine refugees - people who flee their homelands because they are being wiped out through persecution, torture and genocide.  We are talking about people living as majorities in their homelands who are invading our country with the assistance of our social services and NGOs. These are desirable immigrants to those who would end our experiment in freedom and self-government and our trust in each other. These are the people we should send home to fix the problems which they claim have brought them to our shores - problems of their own making, not ours, problems which they are bringing in with them, in fact.  Problems which are their excuse for invading America as phony “refugees”.  

There are those who scoff at the idea of the “Deep State”, a sort of shadow government which is the real power outside of our Constitution.  The Deep State seems to be leaving its calling card with the procedures employed in the Trump impeachment project. If we want to be rid of the Deep State we must begin by securing our country in other ways against terrorism and attack.  We must stop the insane practice of unvetted immigration, we must secure our borders and we must set a very high standard for those who wish to enter our country, whether as students, as part of a military program, as “refugees” or for business purposes.  We live in a dangerous world. We and the Deep State agree on this.  How we react is the difference. We can either become a police state like China or Mussolini’s dictatorship, or we can assert our national right to determine who may enter our free society and who may not, regardless of the verbal abuse we may take.  I would support the latter because I rather like living under Constitutional law.

There is nothing “civil” about “civil forfeiture”, nothing “patriotic” about the “Patriot Act”.  We need to put an end to these institutions. Through programs such as these we are turning our law enforcement and investigation agencies into thugs and a sort of mafia.  There is one more thing we must do - we must reform our training of police and investigation agents. They should learn first and foremost that we are protected from them by our Constitution.  Unfortunately, even in North Dakota, we are failing to even bring up the Constitution in our college criminal justice program except as a “capstone” course! We have to decide - Mussolini’s rule?  Or Constitutional law?

Citizens who care about our Fourth Amendment must bring this up for discussion.  Here is a question for you: why is it our “moral duty” to sacrifice ourselves and our freedoms, so hard-son, for the ostensible benefit of others, or for the vague and at best, neutral concept of “diversity”?  Why is it anyone’s right to make our home theirs absent at the very least a willingness to become “American” first and foremost, leaving behind those cultural elements which are completely incompatible with our way of life and our Constitution?  Why should we bring into our midst anyone who wants to substitute a foreign law or custom for our own? Why should we feel guilt for our cherishing our way of life or for desiring self-preservation and the legacy of our ancestors - which we would pass along to our children?  These questions are particularly brought to the fore when we think of our Fourth Amendment.

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