The trend toward "signing away rights"

[Tim May]

I'm watching a New York television news show reporting on one of the recent cases where people sign away their rights. This is about requests sent out by schools that parents of students sign a pledge that alcohol, loud parties, and late night activities will not be permitted at their homes and that schools and local police will be permitted to inspect the houses without warrants for violations. The news report says that most parents have signed the pledge. So, what of parents who don't? What of parents who send back the note with a "FUCK YOU!" message? Probable cause? The kid faces hassles in the state-run school?

(Voluntarism is not the issue, as there is no voluntariness involved when a state-financed, state-run school, working with the police, sends out such notices.)

For several weeks I have seen television shows--usually on the NBC fascist network, but sometimes on ABC--where it is assumed that "9/11 changed everything," that the Fourth Amendment no longer applies, that the 5th and 6th Amendments no longer are what they were. (The First is not mentioned, I expect because even television liberal whores know this is important to them. The Second is treated as having been defunct since Colonial times, with only criminals having guns.)

Last night had a plot device on "The Practice" (a generally bad show...I ought to stop watching) where nearly all residents in an upscale burbclave had signed a pledge--reminiscent of my opening point--where owners of cars would invite the police to stop their cars and search them without a warrant of any kind, without even today's lax probable cause. Obedient citizen-units would place a bumper sticker on their vehicles giving up their Fourth Amendment expectations of being secure in their papers and possessions. Those who didn't have the bumper sticker, well, there are a _lot_ of cops out there with nothing better to do between donut breaks than to stop cars without stickers for "suspicious reasons."

(I wonder what would happen if a bumper sticker said "I support the Fourth Amendment. Just in case you don't, I have a gun.")


--Tim May
"They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote." --Rep. Ron Paul, TX, on how few Congresscritters saw the USA-PATRIOT Bill before voting overwhelmingly to impose a police state