Our First Amendment is under siege and our 4th Amendment rights have been forced into providing lapdances in clandestine VIP rooms.
Since the eruption of the Snowden-NSA-spying issue/scandal/national dialog there has been a renewed focus on what is left of our rights.
I have elected to start a group where the stories and diaries about the affronts to or protections of the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment.
This has been brewing in my mind for some time, prior to the NSA incident.
Since 12/14/12 the "Second Amendment" has been the predominant 'right' we have heard about. It has a LOT of supporters, many of them foaming at the mouth and maybe - just maybe - they don't truly understand it. They seem to think it is unassailable.
I beg to differ.
Not to get distracted, but to set the stage for why I launched this, the folks who focus on the Second amendment - the right to keep and bear arms - the rest of our rights seem meaningless, as if they don't matter. I sorely disagree.
The BIG difference between the 2nd and the 1st and 4th is that with the 2nd you get a gun to touch. You can see it, feel it, buy as many of them as you want. The government is NOT going to take it away from you.
I'm ok with that.
I will point out that there are already a load of restrictions on where you can shoot that thing and the #1 place you can't shoot it (unless you live in the country) is at your home. So right off the bat, unless you have a life-threatening crisis (which hopefully isn't weekly) you can't shoot that gun without going someplace else. So the 'right" to keep and 'bear" that arm is limited by very practical laws such as discharging a firearm in city limits.
But the 'right' is there and is rather rabidly supported by some.
Some, however, like yours truly, are as "rabid' about the 1st and 4th amendments.
These Rights have been under siege far more than the 2nd and have little 'tangible' elements to them.
AMENDMENT I
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.
Anybody that has ever been to a 'protest' has likely encountered the massive police presence that is generated by 'peaceful protesting'.
When I attended the protest against the Death Penalty for Troy Davis, the police guided us the entire route and at one point we were 'allowed' to congregate in the street next to the Ebeneezer Baptist Church (of Dr. Martin Luther King fame) for about 20 minutes, then we were herded away from this by aggressive cops, some revving their motorcycles aggressively at people and glaring at us.
Similarly, back in 2003 when I went downtown in Atlanta searching for the Anti-War protest against Team Cheney's illegal invasion of IRaq, everybody was guided by police who lead us around and moved us along when we had expressed our 12st Amendment rights "long enough".
It would seem that our 1st Amendment rights have a short shelf life and after we protest X-amount on Subject A we have to be told by police that we have expressed ourselves and now it's time to move along.
Now.... the 4th.
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.
Since atleast the time of Ronald REagan and his 'war on drugs' (actually started by the crook Nixon, but really turned into a republican religion by Reagan) became a HUGE assault on the 4th amendment as the 'war' metaphor was continued.
Cops needed more and more leeway to violate the 4th lest 'the bad guys win'. (Replace "bad guys" with "terrorists" and you have a quick snapshot of the war on drugs' twin sibling, the war on terror). More and more of our constitutional protections needed to be eroded to help make a drug-free America. Who could be against a drug-free America?
That went on for 2 decades and then we got Team Cheney and the Attacks of 9/11. Out of that we got the PATRIOT Act and we all got spied on.
Since Bush and Cheney were placed in office by judicial fiat (a fancy term for political horseshit) we have seen a non-stop assault on the 1st and the 4th amendments.
Peaceful protestors were made out to be terrorisists, their data scooped up and shared with 'terrorism fusion centers' which allowed unarmed protesters to be attacked by cops in a lot of riot gear including batons, tear gas, and guns that shot wooden blocks.
Against peaceful protesters.
IN AMERICA.
This was a huge violation of the 1st and the 4th: Our rights to peaceably assemble and demand a redress of grievences was literally assaulted by cops and shot at AFTER the people's 4th amendment rights were savaged and their data shared with a variety of mean-spirited and easily confused agencies who have little else they can do other than to physically brutalize people.
Fast forward to the Occupy Wall Street action(s). Peaceful protesters INSISTING on extending the shelf-life of the 1st Amendment by rather permanently occupying a space had their private data collected and shared with cops who, famously, brutalized those peaceful protesters, beating them, shooting them with flash-bangs grenades and pepperspray.
Now Americans learn - again - every last breath they take, every thing they buy, every place they go everybody they talk to, everything they type on the net - anything in your life that movbes or makes a squeak is electronically collected, stored, sifted, reviewed and God-knows-what-all because, as Americans, we aren't allowed to know.
So with the 2nd Amendment you get a nice piece of steel and wood that looks nice but is largely not useful, except under certain conditions - but you CAN have it, for what its worth.
With the 1st and 4th you don't get much to touch. You go about your life and express yourself and when you get too free cops will come and tell you to back off and get back in line like a good citizen.
Now, even though gun owners clearly get a pass from the cops
A group of gun owners and gun rights advocates celebrated Independence Day on Thursday by marching on the headquarters of the Houston Police Department while carrying an array of shotguns and assault rifles. According to the Washington Examiner, the group was organized via Facebook and numbered about 25 attendees.
“It’s Independence Day — where it all started,” said shotgun toting protester Jenn Kroll, to the Houston Chronicle. “What better day to show our rights?”
“If you don’t use your rights, they can take them away,” Ed Aldredge of Sugar Land said. Aldridge brought along his 11-year-old son, Austin, who carried a .22-caliber rifle.
They concluded their expression of American Freedom™ by going to a local barbeque joint that allows people to bring their guns.
Try showing up with guns to one of the coming protests in Texas supporting women's rights and see how far you get. I mean, baggers and other conservative dimwits get away with this over and over, but they don't really protest about their rights outside of their right to keep their virtually useless gun.
So here's a group, if you are interested in the 1st and 4th Amendments, how they are supposed to protect us from the government, stories on how that government seeks to truncate, limit, water-down, weaken or dispense with your freedoms as an American.
Please shoot me a kosmail if you'd like to join.