Florida Ballot Amendments Section

No time like the present to talk about the amendments from a libertarian point of view. Keep in mind that one cannot get what one wants by denying it to everyone else.

Ballot Initiative 1. Yes. There should be no such thing as public funding for campaigns, so Yes would appear to make the most sense here.

Ballot Initiative 2. No, this only helps a very few select people and the savings is a joke that will likely cost the counties more than it saves a few tax payers. This is obviously a pie-in-the-sky worthless amendment that appears to be taking care of our boys in arms, but in reality does nothing. A whole extra additional homestead exemption subject to a percentage based on the number of days the person was deployed. That very deployment can actually remove the base homestead exemption if our military person was to rent out their residence while gone. What? How many hard pressed soldiers do you know of that own houses (real property)? At best the military person would be able to qualify for an additional $25,000 exemption but would likely be looking at less. This would result in at most $600 of savings for the county with the worst mill rate. Sounds pretty decent, but shouldn't it be the entire property tax for the year? Of note, however, the person that could really use the $600 is either living in base housing or on ship. This is tax reform? No, it is not. Florida needs to look at removing property tax completely off the table and move to reduced spending and reliance only on sales tax and other optional fees (licensing). Taxing someone simply for owning property goes against the basic right to own property and is not a reasonable means to support government activities.

Ballot Initiative 4. No, no, and more no! People still believe the lie that property value is solely linked to control of what the neighbor does with his property. In a nutshell, it is already bad enough that the local governments think their zoning is the end-all, be-all, final word on what a person may do with property they own. Now we want to amend the Florida constitution to let the neighbors vote on every rezoning event thus giving the property owner 1 say in thousands of what they would like to do with their property. Proponents of this horribly worded amendment don't seem to realize that they won't be voting on what goes in their city, just when local government decides to change the land use plan (rezone). Property ownership aside, this would make rezoning prohibitively expensive thus causing stagnation for many areas as the person or people who want the change would have to find funds to bring land use changes to a vote or just wait until the next larger scale election to consider it. Granted, legally the government would have to fund it, but we all know that means either the taxpayer funds it or another method is found to accomplish it. New business is very unlikely to want to spend money on the possibility of getting a land use changed.... The last thing we need is less freedom for property owners to decide what to do with their property. We need to work on repealing laws that prohibit people from free use of their property, not slap on more restrictions and legal costs to change. The Texas Revolution was fought over less than the kinds of restrictions we live under today. Stand up for your right to do with your property as you wish and stop worrying about what your neighbor wants to do with theirs.

Ballot Initiative 5 & 6. No. These amendments makes no sense. I understand the spirit of them, yet what they would require of us to make it work is nothing less than an invasion of privacy. I am tired of being labeled a race other than American. I was born an American and I am still an American. Anyone who has immigrated to here is an American. Draw the districts as circles and squares, keeping them contiguous and get rid of the long little tails that wrap up, through, and around other districts, yes. Worry about race, culture, political party, religion, sexual affiliation[okay, I added that one, but I honestly see it coming] (etc) no! This is getting ridiculous. If the congressional and legislative districts were meant to be nations, then we'd have the people in the districts determine what the districts boundaries are like the states originally did. The nations are supposed to be the States, not the districts or the counties. This amendment does exactly one thing - opens up a huge hole for legal battles making a bunch of lawyers very rich and accomplishing nothing else.

Ballot Initiative 8. Yes, only because it is less restrictive than the original amendment. Here we see the result of the failing of democracy. Just a few years ago we voted overwhelmingly to put the schools under a strain that we didn't want to actually pay for. This amendment barely relaxes the original one and is just as ridiculous. This is a criteria that should be set by each district and not by a State constitution. The people of the districts should be permitted the flexibility to handle education the way they can afford without having to face legal battles over democratically created laws that look great on paper, but fail miserably in reality.

Nonbinding statewide advisory referendum. Why have an opinion poll on a ballot? Take the place of power that Florida truly has and bindingly tell the federal government to start following the US Constitution as well as immediately suspending all federal deficit spending. If the federal government actually obeyed the Constitution they would have a surplus of funds just from legal taxation (without the income tax).

Special Referendum for Orange County School District. No, no, and hell no. The school district currently throws away between $12,000 and $15,000 per actual full time student. They do not need nor deserve ONE penny more in revenue. They need to restructure and reduce salaries of all their administrators, including eliminating unnecessary levels of management. Get rid of the waste and get the money to the teachers and the classroom. Get rid of the overhead and figure out how to get education down to private school levels of $3,000-6,000 a student. Refuse federal dollars and start educating instead of indoctrinating. Teach theories as theories and don't favor one culture over another.

Why I won't be voting for Marco Rubio

I took a look at Marco Rubio's ideas on how to "take back America"

There are a few very good ideas. Some include automatic sunsetting of government programs, requiring a 2/3 vote of house and senate to approve new taxes, a balanced budget amendment (I could take or leave this as the feds don't follow the rest of the Constitution anyway).

Click the title link to see the lists for yourself.

Every one of his lists includes at least one idea that grants MORE power to the federal government, not less.

List 1: Grow the Economy:

"IDEA #8: Repeal and replace ObamaCare. We must repeal ObamaCare and replace it with common-sense reforms that will actually lower health care costs for American families and businesses." Get rid of one bad federal law and replace it with more bad federal laws to add to the federal laws that created the healthcare problem in the country that had the best healthcare in the world until the federal government started getting involved....

List 2: cut spending (I like many of the ideas he presents here, yet.....)

"IDEA #12: Reform Entitlement Programs. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going broke and will bankrupt our country. Benefits for those currently receiving them or those approaching retirement should not and will not change. But the truth is that for those who are younger, the programs will need to change or they will no longer exist when they themselves approach retirement age. Unlike his opponents, Marco has been willing to confront this reality, to talk about it with voters, and to come up with common-sense solutions that will safeguard our future." The ponzi scheme is failing! /sigh. Keeping this program alive as a federal program just continues to perpetuate the first major scam on the American public since the creation of the federal reserve itself.

List 3 Health Care: Riddled throughout is the demand to move state regulation of insurance to the federal level.Some believe it would open the market to more insurance policies from other states, thus giving MORE options, MORE choice, and lower prices. The reality, as has been proven time and again, is that it would destroy smaller companies, thus reducing choice, reducing options, and increasing prices as fewer business remain to compete. For an existing business to enter a different State's market they just have to comply with the State's regulations - that hardly prevents an insurer from entering a State's market. Each State must have a free market - we should not be considering a federal market, ever!

List 4 Gulf Coast Economy: Several of these ideas have me confused as they aren't federal level ideas (especially the sales tax and property tax relief) However, this one struck me as completely odd,,,,IDEA #10: Relax onerous fishing bag limits and seasons. When it is safe to do so for the next two years, we need to focus on opening our waters with relaxed quotas for all fishing so grounded fisherman can get back to work.

(When/if this oil spill is halted it's hardly the time to look at relaxing fishing limts as these fish populations will be struggling to recover...)

Again, most of these ideas are/should be state level policies and I don't see how they have anything to do with the federal government.

List 5: Education. This list is out of control with massive increase in federal power.

"Idea#6 - protect teachers by insulating them from frivolous lawsuits. " First, our justice system couldn't tell if a lawsuit was frivolous if it was biting their rear-end. Second, we don't need even more people moving to a legally protected status. We need to remove EVERYONE from legal protection - especially our government leaders!

"Idea #3: Make Block Grants Conditional On Performance And Accountability Measures." Oh, yeah, give the federal government even more power over that tiny amount of funding they currently provide our indoctrination centers.

"Idea #12: Promote A National Virtual Learning Platform." Sweet! Let's create the baby that will become our National School indoctrination program that all students will be required to watch from home and is funded by the taxpayer or could be funded by the taxpayer and some businesses! Uhm, no!

I could touch on nearly all the ideas here as they all have a flaw or two that is major.

List 6: Agriculture

"• IDEA #1: Stand Up To The EPA On Numeric Nutrients." This idea makes no sense. Paraphrased: 'We are facing federal imposition of economically damaging numeric nutrient standards, so congress should step-in and ensure that Florida leads the effort to implement numeric nutrients.' Huh? We should lead the way on using them to ensure we don't get economically damaged by having to use them?

"IDEA#2: Promote Economic Growth And Job Creation Through Trade." More NAFTA - after all it REALLY helped us get where we are right now! We traded our jobs and our products right out of the US! Let's do the same with oranges!

"IDEA #5: Reform America’s Foreign Pest And Disease Interdiction Process." Federal efficiency by increasing sharing of information between three agencies that should not be sharing information and at least one of these agencies shouldn't even exist.

"• IDEA #6: Matching Grants For Agriculture Research." Take our tax money and force us to pay for research that is already being paid for by us when we buy the products.

List 7: Commitment to Veterans.

"IDEA #1: Keep The Department Of Veterans Affairs (VA) As A Cabinet Level Department." Instead of dismantling this BS concept, we should continue to tout that the Cabinet is the most powerful table in America and keep American's paying for yet another seat at this table that shouldn't exist.

"IDEA #3: Overcome The Benefits Claim Backlog" How else can this be done without growing the government branch that services these requests?

"IDEA #4: Seamless Transition Back Home." How else can this be read other than to create jobs to tell us veterans what all we are eligible to receive when we leave military service? I thought I got that talk during my last week of service.

"IDEA #8: Demand Accountability At Arlington National Cemetery. We must monitor the Department of the Army’s attempts to straighten out this fiasco and ensure this level of mismanagement is never reached again." We must pay more people to watch the people that we were already paying to check into this fiasco that happened while under the watch of people we were paying to ensure something like this never happened.

"IDEA #9: Increase Veterans Mobile Healthcare Clinics. In 2008, the VA announced four mobile health clinics to bring care to veterans in predominately rural counties. We need to consider adding to the fleet and continue to provide support to those veterans far away from a medical center." More money spent to build facilities that will be in areas where they will barely be used?

"IDEA #2: Protect Defense And Veterans Spending. We must get our country’s budget, deficit and debt under control. However, we cannot do it at the expense of our veteran services, national defense and safety." Neocon much? We can drastically reduce our defense budget by bringing our troops home. But if we did that we wouldn't need agreements with Canada and Mexico to bring their troops to quell civil disturbances on US soil.

Want to help veterans in one fell swoop? Make any person that has served our country federal tax exempt. Not State, just federal.

List 8: Seniors

"IDEA #1: Increase Prosecutions On Those Who Prey On Seniors Through Fraud And Financial Crimes." Forget due process and all that, let's just increase prosecution! This doesn't make any sense. We need to ensure that people who prey on seniors are tried and if found guilty - convicted. Yet if there isn't a case we can't just prosecute them. The federal government doesn't have any say in prosecution of these kinds of crimes, States do.

"IDEA #2: Protect Seniors From Identity Theft." Another BS idea that gives no solution. We need to ensure everyone is protected from identity theft, yet it is not a realistic goal. Yes, we must share ways to help prevent identity theft, but we can't stop it once and for all - the thieves get better at it.

"IDEA #3: Protect Current Benefits For Seniors." Keep SS and Medicare as is for the generation that we cannot afford to provide these benefits for. Whereas I agree with the sentiment, there just isn't the prosperity required to support the baby boomers in and entering retirement. The ponzi scheme is failing - our funds were spent on other things and they don't exist.

"IDEA #5: Crack Down On Unapproved Prescription Drugs." Uhm, no the FDA needs to be constrained as an advisory panel for people to consider before using a drug. The federal government has no authority to remove any drug from the market - the responsibility lies with the consumer to decide what they will use and due process should be brought against any product manufacturer that has placed false claims on their product or endangered people unnecessarily. The FDA is why we pay 20,000-40,000% more than the cost of drugs. I do not need my hand held when it is time to get something that will make it easier for me to endure pain I am in, or to try something new that could save my life, but die while waiting for the FDA to "approve" it.

A pastor wants to do what with what?! Who cares! Seriously? This was the news of the night. It's what I saw on CNN every time I looked up this evening.

I just read Ron Paul's release regarding this nonsense. I was looking for a voice of reason in the storm, but honestly I was a bit taken back by the fact that Dr. Paul sided against the pastor... or at least that is how it looks on the surface. The truth may be in what he didn't say.

Regardless, here are my thoughts and contemplations on what should have been a non-story. In a time when Tea Party and Liberty candidates cannot get decent exposure by the media, they seriously believe that our time should be wasted on a nut exercising his rights to make a fool out of himself?

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The only part I don't get is people giving two bits of a care about what some pastor wants to do with a few copies of the Quran that he bought.

To prove my point, I wouldn't be the least bit offended that someone burned 1,000 copies of the Bible. Want to burn it? Go ahead. It's your own stupidity. I'll still have my copy and millions more will continue to exist.

The only time when book burning is bad is when it is done by the government to prevent the spread of opinions and theories that go against their agenda. Book burning en mass to remove thoughts from the world, including virtual book burning otherwise known as banning. That's the problem to care about.

Where is anyone standing up for this guy's right to express himself as he sees fit? I still, foolishly, I know.... want to believe that in the united States of America we have first amendment rights. If we want to speak out against a war while on tour in France or burn some books or flags to make a political statement, that is our right. Those around us have their right to state their opinion regarding the matter.

However, to blame the future deaths of our troops on a person for upsetting a few people who can't see the true irrelevance of the act is ridiculous. The outrageous comments of our "leaders" in response to something that should not have gotten so much as a head shake truly demonstrates how backwards our society has become.

As a US Navy sailor, I repeatedly stated my resolve that I was in the military to defend Liberty. The phrase, "I may not like what you have to say but I will fight to the death to ensure you have the right to say it" must have been washed out in the last 15 years.

I also find it completely hysterical that our media gives one iota of a damn about moral righteousness. They who are repeatedly guilty of airing prime time shows that belittle religious views of millions of Americans. You can't have it both ways. You cannot be the champions of moral propriety and the entertainers who spend millions producing movies that would last 20 minutes with the curse words removed.

No one has the right, least of all our opinionated, pompous, arrogant media charlatans to decide another man's morals and dictate what he does on his property with his property so long as it does not infringe on the rights of another. Last I checked, burning a few copies of a book you don't agree with doesn't fit into that criteria.

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One parting thought for our feeding frenzy "friends" in the media, "You cannot enjoy freedoms you want denied to everyone else." Chew on that one for a while.

Dear Senator

Thanks to the NRDC's misleading ad on facebook, I ended up on their site where they were asking me to take action and write to my senator to condemn their inaction on "comprehensive climate and energy legislation."

So, since they pulled me in under false pretenses, I cleared out their text demanding creation of 2 million clean energy jobs and etc and replaced it with this:

Whereas we need clean energy and the ability to get away from Oil dependence, I do not agree with the Federal Government taking it upon themselves to decide anything in this area as they do not have the Constitutional authority to do so. However, they should make a case to the States to take under consideration what should be done to reduce pollution.

Of course, the repeal of laws making it nigh impossible to create a dam, build a nuclear power plant, or otherwise invest in alternatives to oil would be a step in the right direction.

Increasing taxes on current forms of energy is not an option. In a time when people can barely find enough money to keep their basic needs satisfied where Electric and Gas Energy for the home looks like another rent or mortgage payment, a tax would mean that many low income folks would simply have to do without. Could you imagine living without electricity or the ability to drive? No throwing more taxes on that basic building block of our economic infrastructure would only serve to cripple our country.

Please investigate ways to make it easier for people to bring us electric generation that does not depend on coal or oil and empower the people to develop a car that runs off hydrogen, electricity, and natural gas to help reduce carbon emissions without taxing the entire country into poverty.

Thanks!

Marc

Schools believe they have power over parents - sadly so do parents

I have no problem accessing my child's classroom at any moment.....but then I homeschool.

The public schools are the worst plague this country has, spreading lies about our country's system of government and teaching theories that require as much faith as any religion does as fact.

"Trespassing on public property..." when are these idiots going to understand how ridiculous they sound? Sure, we don't want people aimlessly wandering around on a school yard, especially with the worry of possible predators, kidnappers, etc. At the same time, however, how can one trespass on their own property? I you are the parent of a child, you have a right to be there and all you should have to do is check-in and get a visitor badge at most. When school is out it is community property and the community will use it. Vandals, if caught, should be prosecuted. However you can't throw down the gauntlet and shut the school grounds off to access because someone might do something. The school grounds best protection are parents and their kids using the play areas and tracks during off hours as a family.

A school board doesn't have the power to authorize a principal to detain a visitor as they don't have the power to detain a visitor. However, in this new era of Government OVER the people that has been being preached as gospel since the 1950's most people would just laugh if you told them that government cannot create powers out of thin air.

The authoritarian state is growing out of control and as long as they keep the majority believing that they need Democrats or Republicans to "fix it" we will continue to go down the path of servitude to our benevolent government while worshiping at the alter of humanism.

We don't need government at all. Government knows this and fights to hold power and "prove" our need for it with lies, problem creation, and by playing on our social nature to claim its power. It is an abomination of natural order when people claim power over other people and the end result is always the same, killing the people the body in power is charged with protecting.

We need voluntarism where people knowingly give up a bit of their sovereignty to gain benefits. No one should be born into a system where they have no choice to take on the benefits before they know what they are going to give up to get them. One example of that is a toll-road. Sure it isn't perfect, but you only pay the toll if you want to drive on the road. The bottom line is things that people won't willingly volunteer for will die out. Ninety-nine percent of todays government programs would be gone if people were permitted to volunteer for it as most people cannot see the benefit of them. The programs that did survive would be efficient because people would not stay with a program where they were getting less from it than what they were putting into it. But then, that is the argument for why businesses work only in a free market. People vote with their dollars and when a company messes up it fails and gets bought up in pieces by other companies. Government and social markets can keep a failing company or program alive as long as they can steal enough money from the citizens to keep it afloat. BAILOUTS mean anything to you? People voted with their dollars to let GM go out of business, GM wasted tons of money trying to correct that image and when it was still failing government bought it out. We bought a failing car company? Why? Do not get me wrong, I love my Dodge Durango, but I don't see why people believe any company is too big to fail.

Keeping dead companies afloat may keep some jobs for a while, but it doesn't help us address the larger problem as quickly as we could by just returning to a free market . We didn't even actually bail them out. We took a loan, printing more dollars, to give them money to stay in operation. More money in circulation makes it worth less. We all took a pay cut to keep these companies running. We will see that pay cut in the near future as prices rise due to too much currency in circulation. No matter how you dress a problem up it really comes down to the same question, in business. "Team, we are not making enough money to keep operating as we have been. We either have to lay some people off or ask you all to take a percentage pay cut." Either some of us or all of us get affected, no matter how you look at it. However, solving it by throwing money at it and keeping a company that failed running does more damage in the long run. It undermines our confidence in ourselves, it rewards reckless behavior, and it punishes companies that did what they needed to do to stay competitive. In the end that affects everyone - from the competition to the customer. We are all being punished for the misdeeds of a few big companies and banks. That, frankly, makes no sense to me.

When a free market reacts to a depression, like the one we are currently in, it kills what caused the issue, in this case several big businesses would have failed or they would have sold off assets to cover losses. If this happens on a grand scale then we enter a depression. The most significant thing about a depression is that the you lose a lot of jobs. As people lose their jobs other companies begin to feel the loss of customers so they do what they must to survive by lowering prices, finding ways to be more efficient, they might layoff employees or go under as well. Prices do not rise or stay firm during a free market depression. They follow the buyers. In the false markets of today and since FDR prices stay flat or even rise during a recession or depression. This is just one of the reasons why we continue to become worse off as time goes on. The government is not permitting a true market correction. They print more money, create nonsense jobs and make us all suffer far longer than would happen if they got out of the business of regulating market fluctuations. The great depression of the 20's was an almost immediate result of government regulation on the free market. Most people haven't even heard of the great depression of the 1880's because it was permitted to go through correction and society pulled through it, just like all the previous recessions and depressions that had occurred for the centuries prior. Only in the last century have we seen depressions that can affect the economy for decades and that is 100% due to our falsely tampering with the mechanism that only works when we take government out of the equation. The founding fathers knew it, why do we continue to believe that we know better than them? Because our schools have been teaching us we do for the past 60+ years, that is why.

Freedom only works when we teach people what it truly is. Freedom, Liberty, is NOT freedom from desire or need, it is freedom from tyranny. Freedom to make a choice, not freedom to enforce a choice. People cite how cruel the world is and argue that we can't live in freedom because of the dangers to us. We must give up Liberties to be safe. That is complete nonsense. History documents with black and white clarity that giving up Liberty is exactly how you lose safety. When you give the State the power to make you safe, they will keep you safe by killing you, your neighbors, and anyone else they think might be a threat to anyone for any reason. Lynch mobs are exactly what an authoritarian state is. In a free society with an educated population people demand evidence and reason before action.

People complain that government isn't efficient and that things are not progressing in DC. These days things progress too much and pass to fast right through the three bodies of government that were designed to do exactly one thing - fight each other to ensure they did very little to nothing. The federal government was never intended to be our solution factory. It was designed to be a guardian of our Liberty. Some people think adding amendments to the constitution will somehow help. I can think of several amendments that we need. The problem is that the government does not abide by the document now, so why would it start suddenly just because a few amendments got added to it? What is the one thing that our government can't seem to do, but is supposed to do? It is supposed to use our military to defend us. The only way it is go to war is by a vote in the house to make a declaration of war. When was the last time our Congress did that? We have been at war since the end of World War II, without so much as a tiny teeny declaration. Why? Is it really that impossible to get a majority vote to go to war for cause? We can pass unconstitutional laws all day long through the Congress, stripping our basic rights and telling us we owe each other things that no man can claim as a right, yet we can not declare war? Our government is pitiful.

We are living in a democratic anarchy that is cloaked as a democratic republic, but it is supposed to be a republic. The difference between democracy and a republic is that a democracy is about popular vote making law while a republic is about rule by law with a process to amend existing laws by due process. A law cannot be voted out in a Republic. A Republican form of government protects the rights of the minority from the majority. In a democracy the majority can simply vote out the rights of the minority.

I dare you to argue to me that we do not live in anarchy. Prove it. The media uses the battle cry of "That would be anarchy!" to people who speak values of Liberty. They must not know what anarchy means. I will help them. Anarchy: "A state of lawlessness". When the government does not obey the law it was created under then you are in anarchy. This country had law and order long before the Constitution was written. The several states had bodies of government that ensured due process for their citizens. Yet, they were much more free than they are now. Freedom does not equal lawlessness. Do not let the uneducated, indoctrinated minds of our media tell you otherwise. Lawlessness is democracy. Democracy is arbitrary use of money and power without checks and balances. We are in anarchy right now friends and the powers that be will continue to depend on you doubting your rights and believing that they are in charge to push their agenda forward.

When the day comes that a true American Patriot stands up and puts them self in the way of that agenda you will see the true nature of government as they pull out their force and use it. They can't afford for you to see it too overtly, they don't want you to. They hide behind color-of-law and pretend to do things legally.

We cannot win another war for freedom. Our founding father's failed when they chose that path. Freedom can only win by opening people's minds through discussion and debate. The last war for Liberty was lost by the people who did not start the war and who were fighting for freedom as defense. Yes, they lived in a a pitiful state of duplicity - craving freedom while denying it to their brothers. I will not defend that. However, anyone who still believes that the civil war was a civil war or that it was about freeing the slaves obviously hasn't read more than the school book version of history. True history, even that edited by the North, shows what the war was about and accounts the misdeeds of both sides and the way they failed their citizenry while a war between two nations took place. It was a failed revolution, not a civil war.

Just because a founding father said the tree of Liberty must be fed by blood doesn't mean he meant through war. It must be fed by blood, sweat, and tears of those laboring to help others understand how imperfect liberty is and how it is exactly the system the our imperfect human selves need. Communism and Socialism are great theories and beautiful principles based on sharing equally. They are also a complete impossibility as you cannot find a benevolent enough person to run government that only takes exactly their share and ensures everyone else gets the same. Only God can be benevolent and ensure we all get a fair share. All others will pad their share and deduct just a little from the whole. True capitalism permits the end user the power to destroy a corrupt organization. A socialist controlled market allows the government to force people to participate thus ensuring the corrupt organization survives as long as they want to.

Only the people can hold the government accountable. Only we can get them back on the Constitution. I believe that the only way this is ever going to get corrected is for us to work at the local level to take back local governments, then to take back our State governments. Then our State governments will have the power they need to cut off the anarchist federal government and force it to get back to constitutional restrictions. The reconstruction amendment framers knew this and that is why they removed the State power to appoint Senators. This amendment along with the popular vote amendment for the President of the US made this country a democracy. The President of the United States was never intended to be the Leader of the Free World, nor the leader of our country. He is not a King and was never supposed to be. He was put in place to stop the Congress from pushing through unconstitutional laws and to ensure the Supreme Court kept competent judges on it that would keep our Constitutional Republic exactly that.

Instead, we have anarchy. Brought to you by the bi-partisan movement of compromise. Compromise, as most married couples will share, is where you both lose a little in order to both win a little. Whereas in a household the compromise may simply be the husband wanting pizza and the wife gets to pick the toppings, in government that means that Group A wants to pass a bill about opening government documents for review every 10 years, but group B won't vote for it unless they put a Search and Seizure rider on the bill granting the federal government the power to seize an entire crop of corn if a marijuana plant was found growing with it. Group A knows they need at least half of the people from Group B to pass the bill so they say, "Sure." The bill passes and next year the open document law is removed by another bill passing however the search and seizure law remains on the books. Yes, it is only regulatory law, but most courts are convinced that regulatory law is just as powerful as the Constitution so many farmers lose their crops because a punk kid planted a couple marijuana plants on their fields, but no one can prove the kid did it. That is where we are today. Compromise - multiple laws on a bill that have nothing to do with the bill. That is why you had people voting for the Health Care bill - a couple more bucks for a project in their state. Compromise is the tool that was discovered to ram any piece of crap through our federal government. Now we need our States to wakeup and realize they have the right to say, "No!". You may be prompted to say, "We need an ammendment stating 'One bill, one law'!" The problem is the government doesn't obey the law right now, so why would they obey one more silly ammendment?

(republished to fix my spelling error in the title. I r a public education victim!) ;0)

Strip Search for Ibuprofen found reasonable by US Supreme Court

Amendment 4, Constitution of the United States of America

Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

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.

What part of this doesn't apply when a child is in school? According to the US Supreme Court which derives it's power from the same Constitution it ignores, its okay to search a child. According to the Justices of our Supreme Law of the Land:

"...there was no clearly established law finding unconstitutional the strip searching of students under materially similar circumstances from the Supreme Court..."

Really? What is the 4th amendment? A cute paragraph on a rotting piece of paper?

Wrong, supreme court, wrong!

The school does not have the power to search. It only has the power to send a child away from the school. The biggest thing that should have happened was the parents should have been called and Redding should have been sent home for the day.

For the love of all that is holy, we don't permit our schools to spank, why in the world would we grant them the power to individually search? Yes, I know - many schools have metal detectors and some even have bag searches. Ideologically I have issue with that as it does not prevent someone from getting a gun or a knife in the school. It might prevent someone from bringing one just to show their friends how cool they are, but someone with a purpose is not going to be deterred by all the coolest detectors, bells, and/or whistles in the world.

The Supreme Court has also asked the United States Court of Appeals to reconsider other cases similar to this and consider granting "qualified immunity" to the searches in other such cases. "Hey, guys - now that we think strip searches are okay because we do not care about the Constitution anymore, neither should you." If you read the link where I pulled the quote from you'll see that the sixth circuit court cited some case law and squarely told the Supreme Court that they stood by their decision against the people who strip searched a group of 20 students.

What Americans do not realize is that noone has the right to search you without probable cause. A person says they saw you waving a gun around - the police have the right to ask you if you were indeed waving a gun around. At this point they do not have probable cause to search you. If you are acting hostile and confrontational they will probably arrest you and at that point conduct a pat-down search, not because you were accused of having a weapon, but because you gave them probable cause to suspect you may be dangerous. If a police officer sees you waving the gun around he will definitely subdue and search you. Once you get to the jail you will be changing garments and your effects will be cataloged. If you remained level headed during the questioning the police officer would have to get a court order to search you.

Okay, the police officer, as a government representative must follow the Constitution, but does a school official fall under that? No. They are not government officials and the only right they have is to deny access to the school until things can be investigated. Their duty is to protect the other students, and in order to do that they should send a suspected student home - not order up a search.

Of course, that would lead to another news story about a student being sent home for having a subscription drug on them. Still ridiculous in my opinion. Schools are not law enforcement officials and they need to get the idea that they are out of their heads.