released 24 October 2014 Written : Friction (C.Phifer ) Produced: Dj Scandales (K. Clinton) Engineer: Ariel Borujow Recorded : Stadium Red Studios Harlem NY 80 Acres And A Porsche Productions (BMI) BlackOut Records/ BlackOutInk Entertainment
A lawsuit in San Diego, California has been filed after a Christian school decided not to enroll a child who has two moms. The school cites their religious beliefs against homosexual lifestyles as the reason for not admitting the child, and the child’s mothers are now filing suit against the school claiming discrimination.
My husband, David French, a constitutional attorney and expert on education and discrimination law, comments on this case at National Review:
Here’s a question for the secular left — when religious liberty collides with the desires of LGBT citizens, is there any case where religious freedom should prevail? How about when a lesbian couple tries to force a private Christian school to educate their child?
[…]
I’m on the board of my kids’ Christian school, and we clearly and unequivocally both teach and practice that the school can’t do its work without the full support and cooperation of the parents. One of the great advantages of private education is the partnership between parents and schools, and the notion that we would be forced into partnership with people who fundamentally reject our values is antithetical to any meaningful conception of religious freedom. If this controversy goes to court it will present an interesting lesson for those who believe that Christians can leave the culture wars behind and safely retreat to their own enclaves. The radical left will find you. When the goal is destroying a belief system, there is no safe way to freely exercise your faith.
Here’s a question for the secular left — when religious liberty collides with the desires of LGBT citizens, is there any case where religious freedom should prevail? How about when a lesbian couple tries to force a private Christian school to educate their child? A five-year-old San Diego, Calif. girl is at home, instead of starting off kindergarten with her friends, because her school, the Mt. Erie Christian Academy, refused to welcome her any longer because she has two moms . . . The child, who had attended Mt. Erie for pre-school and summer school was abruptly cut off when her parents were called in on the Friday before Labor Day, just before school started, where the pastor broke the news: The child’s parents are looking to file suit, hoping to force their child’s readmission to the school: The mothers are seeking an attorney to file a civil rights lawsuit against the school. When asked by the news team if it was discrimination to stop the child from attending because of her mothers, a woman who described herself as the school’s director, said, “The Bible says homosexuality is a sin. We don’t condone any sinful lifestyles.” This should be an open-and-shut case, for the school. It’s not a public institution, it doesn’t take public funds, and the school’s handbook contains this crystal-clear statement: Mt. Erie Christian Academy is a religious, Bible-believing institution providing education in a distinct Christian environment, and it believes that its biblical role is to work in conjunction with the home to mold students to be Christ like. On those occasions in which the atmosphere or conduct within a particular home is counter to or in opposition to the biblical lifestyle that the school teaches, the school reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to refuse admission of an applicant or to discontinue enrollment of a student. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, living in, condoning or supporting sexual immorality; practicing homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity; promoting such practices; or otherwise having the inability to support the moral principles of the school (Leviticus 20:13a; Romans 1:21-27; Matthew 19:4-6; I Corinthians 6:9-20). The local news, however, found an attorney who actually believes that refusing admission to a five-year old could be as psychologically damaging to her as human sacrifice or amputation. I sincerely hope he’s been misquoted: [San Diego attorney Eugene Iredale] said both California and federal cases have upheld the right of private institutions to bar membership based on religious beliefs. That is exactly the opposite of discrimination laws that pertain to publicly-funded programs and businesses that cater to the general public. “Now the question is where do you draw the line?” Iredale asked. “If you have a religion that believed in human sacrifice or amputation of the arm or the hand for theft, would we permit that in the interest of permitting the free practice of one’s religion? I don’t think so, and one could argue that psychologically… this is as devastating to the little 5-year-old girl as some of those other vicious practices.” I’m on the board of my kids’ Christian school, and we clearly and unequivocally both teach and practice that the school can’t do its work without the full support and cooperation of the parents. One of the great advantages of private education is the partnership between parents and schools, and the notion that we would be forced into partnership with people who fundamentally reject our values is antithetical to any meaningful conception of religious freedom. If this controversy goes to court it will present an interesting lesson for those who believe that Christians can leave the culture wars behind and safely retreat to their own enclaves. The radical left will find you. When the goal is destroying a belief system, there is no safe way to freely exercise your faith.
Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner (R) may have had a pretty spotty track record during his time in office, but his last act – resigning in disgrace – may have been the very best thing he did. With Republican leadership suddenly in disarray, the government shutdown that Tea Party conservatives led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had been planning now seems to have gone completely off the rails. Cruz is VERY upset.
Cruz had originally planned to introduce an amendment to a government funding bill that would have – follow me here – placed a one-year ban on giving federal funds to Planned Parenthood and block the Iran nuclear deal all in one fell swoop. If those goals seemed quixotic at best, that’s because their very impossibility was the entire point. Cruz, who already has one government shutdown under his belt, planned on getting a second one, just in time for election season.
Instead of marching Washington into gridlock, a possibility that just a week ago was looking like a grim inevitability, Boehner resigned and Republicans were thrown into chaos. Cruz was forced to watch with helpless humiliation as his so-called amendmentgot shot down before his eyes.
The Texas Republican, who is running for president, was blocked from offering his amendment during a voice vote. He tried to get a roll call vote but couldn’t get the necessary support from his colleagues.
So did Cruz take the news of his unraveling government shutdown plan well? He did not.
In an hour long rant on the Senate floor, Cruz appeared so angry that he hardly managed to stick on one subject before jumping onto the next. He accused his own party, which had just thrown him under the bus, of giving into President Obama. In the process, he took as many potshots at his soon-to-be former colleague, John Boehner, as possible.
“The Speaker of the House John Boehner announced he was going to resign. There was lots of speculation on the media as to why [Boehner] resigned. Mr. President, I’m going to tell you why he resigned: It’s actually a direct manifestation of this disconnect between the voters back home and Republican leadership. Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell had promised there will be no shutdown, so therefore they will fund every single priority of Barack Obama.”
(First of all, that’s President Obama to you, Ted. It’s customary to afford the dignity of the office to the man who holds it when addressing him on the floor of the Senate – whether you personally respect him or not.)
The prime issue Cruz had was that his fellow Republicans showed a willingness to compromise with Democrats. Compromise is what most Americans say they want Congress to do, but Cruz would prefer to have things his way or not at all. Any sign of capitulation is treason in his mind. Cruz thinks the continued existence of the government he works for can and should be used as a hostage whenever possible.
While Cruz may enjoy watching the government shut down, it’s easy to see why members of the Republican leadership were freaking out about the possibility of a second one in just two years. The first shutdown may have made Cruz a household name, and an icon of the far-right, but it was a disaster for both the Republican Party (which was universally blamed) and the American people (which were universally screwed over). A second shutdown would likely get Ted Cruz a slight bump in the polls during the Republican primaries… and cost the GOP one of the worst electoral defeats in United States history.
In other words, Republicans were saving Ted Cruz’s ass by putting an end to his silly attempt to bully his way into a government shutdown. And like a child who was forced to eat his vegetables, he resents the grownups in the room for making him do it.
A new study finds that the world’s seabird populations have plummeted by almost 70% in just 60 years.
The Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) undertakes the longest known migration of any animal, travelling from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back each year. The IUCN Red List considers the species as Least Concern, but its population is in decline. Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International
Every day for sixty million years, seabirds have performed mind-boggling acts of derring-do: circumnavigating the globe without rest, diving more than 200 meters in treacherous seas for a bite of lunch, braving the most unpredictable weather on the planet as if it were just another Tuesday and finding their way home in waters with few, if any, landmarks.
But now seabirds, like so many other species, may have met their match.
Conservationists have long known that many seabird populations are in decline, but a recent paper in PLOS ONE finds the situation worse than anticipated. According to the researchers, seabird abundance has dropped 69.7% in just 60 years – representing the deaths of some 230 million animals.
“I was very surprised with the result, it was considerably greater than I’d expected,” said Edd Hammill, co-author of the paper, with Utah State University. “What we should take away from this is that something is serious amiss in the oceans.”
Ben Lascelles, a Senior Marine Officer with Birdlife International, who was not involved in the study, said he found the research alarming because the decline appeared practically indiscriminate, hitting a “large number of species across a number of families.”
Seabirds, which include any bird that depends largely on the marine environment, comprise nearly 350 species worldwide – an astonishing variety of extreme-loving birds. For example, the indefatigable wandering albatross, which sports the largest wingspan on the planet; the child-sized Emperor penguin, the only bird that breeds during the Antarctic winter; and the tiny storm petrel that practically capers on the water as it feeds – they are named for St. Peter after all.
But, given that seabirds inhabit both the open ocean and the shoreline, this eclectic mix of birds faces a litany of threats: overfishing, drowning in fishing lines or nets, plastic pollution, invasive species like rats in nesting areas, oil and gas development and toxic pollution moving up the food chain. And as if these weren’t enough, the double-whammy of climate change and ocean acidification threatens to flood nesting sites and disrupt food sources.
“Seabirds are particularly good indicators of the health of marine ecosystems,” explained lead author, Michelle Paleczny with the University of British Columbia and the Sea Around Us Project. “When we see this magnitude of seabird decline, we can see there is something wrong with marine ecosystems. It gives us an idea of the overall impact we’re having.”
Bu with such a large number of species across such a wide variety of environment one is left asking: how did the scientists count so many birds?
Counting Birds
First, the team of researchers scoured all the population data on seabirds available. They found demographic data on 3,213 populations. But they couldn’t use all of theses counts, since conservationists had surveyed many of these far-flung populations just once or twice – not enough to show a real trend
The team eventually selected 513 populations that had been counted at least five times. In all, these populations represented about 19 percent of the world’s seabirds.
Still, Hammil said he believes the team’s findings “are an accurate representation of what is happening worldwide.”
He added, “although we did not include every population, all seabird families were included, and we included populations from every major coastline in the world.”
Paleczny also said that when the researchers looked at the differences between monitored and unmonitored populations, they saw “no evidence that the monitored populations are declining more.”
The Near Threatened Black-footed Albatross (Phoebastria nigripes) is a species at risk of accidental bycatch in fisheries of the North Pacific. However, simple mitigation measures have proved to be very effective at keeping seabirds off the hooks. Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International
The findings are also bolstered by past research. In 2012 a paper in BirdConservation International found that 28 percent of seabird species are threatened with extinction with 47 percent in decline. This meant, in all, seabirds were about twice as likely as land-based birds to be threatened with extinction.
“The trends for many seabird species have clearly been downwards for a number of years, and this paper provides further evidence of this,” Lascelles said.
Still, Paleczny and Hammil’s research arguably paints an even more alarming picture of the state of the world’s seabirds. For example, according to them, the tern family has fallen by 85%, frigatebirds by 81%, petrels and shearwaters by 79%, and albatrosses by 69%.
Such dismal findings point to one of the study’s patterns: open ocean birds – such as albatrosses, frigatebirds, petrels and shearwaters – are generally faring worse than birds that stick near the coasts.
“[Open-ocean] seabirds are hit especially hard due to their large geographic ranges. Because these species travel so far, there is a greater chance they will encounter threats,” said Hammill who noted that coastal birds “in some cases” are doing better because of improved management of breeding areas and improved fishing gear.
But even when threats were minimised, Lascelles noted that recovery requires diligence and patience.
A gannet grabs a fish by its beak, 2014, in Shetland, Scotland. Gannets, and other seabirds, depend on abundant fish populations to survive. Photograph: Richard Shucksmith/BarcroftMedia/Richard Shucksmith/BarcroftMedia
“Most seabirds are long-lived and slow reproducing, this means even quite small increases in mortality can lead to significant population declines, which they take a long time to recover from.”
And even some widely-dispersed coastal birds are undergoing heavy declines. For example, the study found that cormorant and shag populations have fallen by 73%.
Going Forward
Given all the threats facing the world’s seabirds, it’s fair to ask: where do we start when it comes to conservation?
“We already have solutions to many of the threats...it’s just they need scaling up and implementing across industries and geographies,” Lascelles said. “Increased efforts should be made to rid seabird colonies of invasive species, reduce bycatch in fisheries or the ensnaring of birds in fish nets, and setting up conservation areas.”
Laysan Albatross adult and chick on nest dwarfed by pile of marine debris collected on Midway Atoll coast by volunteers. Plastic poses a major threat to the world’s seabirds and other marine species. The Laysan Albatross is categorised as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List. Photograph: Alamy
Paleczny also called for the creation of international marine protected areas to cover the wide ranges of seabirds.
Protected areas in the oceans lag far behind those on land. Currently, only 2% of the world’s oceans are under some form of protection and less than half of those ban fishing altogether. In contrast, nearly 15% of the world’s terrestrial landscape is protected.
With so little of the ocean theoretically closed to fisheries – less than 1% – it’s hardly shocking that many seabirds are suffering from overfishing. Indeed, an illuminating study from 2012 found that whenever fish abundance dropped below one-third of maximum levels, seabird populations began to fall in response.
“What this is saying is that [seabirds] have evolved to exploit average to above-average feeding conditions,” co-author Ian Boyd told Mongabay in 2012. “This isn’t really very surprising, but some things don’t become obvious until the evidence is right in front of you.”
At the time, Boyd said their findings should result in a new campaign to save “one third for the birds” (and other marine predators) from the world’s fisheries.
But to Hammill the “most pressing issue” is plastic pollution.
Long neglected by environmentalists – perhaps due to the intractability of the problem – the issue of plastic pollution in the oceans has been slowly getting more notice. A paper released last month found that 90% of the world’s seabirds likely have plastic in their stomachs.
“I have seen everything from cigarette lighters...to bottle caps to model cars. I’ve found toys [inside seabird guts],” co-author Denise Hardesty, with CSIRO, told the Associated Press.
Seabirds continually mistake plastic for fish eggs, devouring large amounts. Plastic in animals’ stomachs not only release deadly toxins, but can also lead to slow starvation by obstructing the animals’ bowels. Birds even feed plastic bits to their young, killing their fledglings en masse.
In the end, large-scale actions to help seabirds could also go a long way in cleaning-up our increasingly trashed marine ecosystems.
“The oceans are still woefully under protected and fisheries need greater management and enforcement. All of these activities need investment and support of governments around the world to make them happen,” Lascelles said. “These actions will build resilience in the seabird populations in the short term, which they need in the face of emerging threats such as climate change.”
No other bird breeds further south than the Near Threatened Adelie Penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae). Numbers are increasing in the Ross Sea region and decreasing in the Peninsula region, with the net global population increasing overall. But other penguin species aren’t faring so well. Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International
The accidental bycatch of huge numbers of seabirds in a variety of fisheries (e.g. longline, trawl, gillnets) is one of the main threat facing seabirds and has driven the declines in many species, particularly albatross. However a number of simple mitigation measures are available, and where they have been implemented the reduction in bycatch has been dramatic. Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International
The razorbill (Alca torda) is a member of the puffin family restricted to the North Atlantic. They nest on rocky cliff faces in huge colonies, in some location reduction in sandeel, their main prey item, has caused reduced productivity and declines. Photograph: Ben Lascelles/Birdlife International
Four out of five Supreme Court justices in the State of Maine think that parental rights concerning vaccination are moot in the event that the State takes custody of a child. In a landmark ruling that sets a dire precedent for health freedom, the Court decided in a recent case that a mother whose child was taken into custody by the State of Maine no longer has authority to opt out of vaccinations for her own child.
Reiterating why we need a constitutional amendment that clearly delineates the fundamental right of parents to make health decisions for their own children, the Court declared that the statutory rights of parents are terminable at will, even when there's no "clear and convincing evidence" that such rights need to be revoked for a child's safety.
Under Maine State law, a mother's parental rights must first be legally terminated before the state is allowed to assume guardianship over a child. The validity of such termination is predicated on certain requirements being met on a case-by-case basis before the State is allowed to start making outlying health decisions concerning a child's welfare.
In this case, however, the State of Maine decided to override the mother's statutory rights based on a negligence determination that had nothing whatsoever to do with the child's vaccination status. A Lower Court had earlier decided that the mother's child was in danger due to the mother's boyfriend, which had nothing to do with whether or not the child was vaccinated. Nevertheless, a judge ordered that the Child Welfare department administer vaccines to the child against the mother's will.
The mother tried to appeal this decision, but she was ultimately shut down. In a 4-1 decision, the Maine Supreme Court ruled that the mother has no right to appeal the judge's orders unless her appeal deals specifically with the custody decision. In other words, once a child is taken into custody by the State, a judge - and not the child's mother or legal guardian - is granted full authority to make medical decisions for that child.
"The Department's decision to vaccinate Z.S. (the child in question) is a final decision that forever precludes the mother from exercising her statutory right to opt out," stated the Honorable Joseph M. Jabar, the one dissenting judge. "In ordering the Department to vaccinate Z.S. over the mother's objections, the court effectively terminated this statutory parental right without any hearing or any decision arrived at by clear and convincing evidence."
"This refusal to require that the 'terms of the order' recognize and adhere to parental rights established in statutory law provides a dire warning to any parent in Maine: If the state takes your child, the judge has very broad discretion to place in any custody decision that goes against you orders beyond the scope of the original case," reports ParentalRights.org.
Should States be allowed to override parental authority? These four justices think so
The four justices who denied this mother her statutory rights, setting a dangerous precedent for future custody cases, are as follows:
Chief Justice Leigh I. Saufley Maine Supreme Judicial Court 205 Newbury Street, Room 139 Portland, Maine 04101-4125 (207) 822-4286
Donald G. Alexander Maine Supreme Judicial Court 205 Newbury Street, Room 139 Portland, Maine 04101-4125 (207) 822-4175
Andrew M. Mead Penobscot Judicial Center 78 Exchange Street Bangor, Maine 04401-4913 (207) 561-2310
Is it ever legal to shoot cops? A growing number of states are passing laws that say that yes, in fact, sometimes it is well within a citizen’s rights to shoot a police officer.
The new law was drafted to “recognize the unique character of a citizen’s home and to ensure that a citizen feels secure in his or her own home against unlawful intrusion by another individual or a public servant.”
This should hardly be seen as profound. In the past, self-defense was viewed as a human right. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the citizenry of the United States, it recognizes natural rights. One of those rights — a veritable law of Nature — is the right to resist.
No matter what one does, or takes from you, nothing can stop the innate right to follow our natural impulses of resistance. That does not mean all will exercise that right. But the right itself is natural, primordial, inborn.
The new amendment in Indian recognizes this. It makes it clear that badges do not grant special rights to break into someone’s house and commit acts of violent aggression. If they do, the resident has the right to resist those illegal actions and defend themselves.
The Free Thought Project notes that many police officers “have already begun to fear monger the passage of this bill,” saying “If I pull over a car and I walk up to it and the guy shoots me, he’s going to say, ‘Well, he was trying to illegally enter my property.’”
This fear mongering comes from Joseph Hubbard, 40, the president of Jeffersonville Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 100, who asserts “somebody is going get away with killing a cop because of this law.”
(i) A person is justified in using reasonable force against a public servant if the person reasonably believes the force is necessary to: (1) protect the person or a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the imminent use of unlawful force; (2) prevent or terminate the public servant’s unlawful entry of or attack on the person’s dwelling, curtilage, or occupied motor vehicle; or (3) prevent or terminate the public servant’s unlawful trespass on or criminal interference with property lawfully in the person’s possession, lawfully in possession of a member of the person’s immediate family, or belonging to a person whose property the person has authority to protect
'No one makes alliances with the weak,' says Prime Minister shortly after meeting Putin.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered a glimpse into his strategic aspirations Thursday at a Jewish New Year's reception at Mossad headquarters, which also marked 65 years since the intelligence arm's founding.
"We cannot solve the basic problems of the Middle East,” he said. “They are revealing themselves in their full force, and today our enemy is a double enemy: it is radical Shi'ite Islam that is led by Iran and its proxies, and the Sunni one, currently led by ISIS (Islamic State).”
"They fight each other, but they agree that we have no place in this Muslim region, as they see it. The alliances change, they rise and fall and rise again and send arms in various directions, including ours.”
"There is one certain rule,” Netanyahu intoned: “No one strikes an alliance with the weak. Our true defense in the years of the state's existence and the 65 years that the Mossad is marking now, is the strength of the state of Israel. It is this strength that we maintain.”
"In the face of this changing world, Israel must be a power. Not just a regional power, but in some spheres, a world power.”
Netanyahu said he was determined to stop arms deliveries to the Hezbollah terrorist group that has been aiding Assad forces, and accused Syria's army and Iran of trying to create a "second front" against Israel. Iran has deployed hundreds of additional soldiers from its Revolutionary Guards Force in an effort to prevent flagging pro-Assad forces crumbling in the face of concerted rebel offensives on their western heartlands.
Putin for his part said Russia's actions in the Middle East "always were and will be very responsible," and downplayed the threat by Syrian forces to Israel.
"We know and understand that the Syrian army and Syria in general is in such a state that it isn't up to opening a second front - it is trying to maintain its own statehood," he said in comments broadcast on Russian television.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference in the Manhattan borough of New York January 18, 2015.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo renewed his call for national gun control legislation on Saturday as he delivered a eulogy for the top state attorney who was fatally wounded by a stray bullet in Brooklyn earlier this month.
State officials and family members gathered at Brooklyn's Emmanuel Baptist Church in a private service for Carey Gabay, 43, who was struck in the head at a pre-dawn outdoor celebration on Sept. 7 before the annual West Indian Day parade, an event plagued by violence in recent years.
Gabay is believed to have been an unintended target, police said.
"His death was one of the most tragic, pointless examples of the rampant violence that is spreading like a cancer through our society, especially in our poorer communities and especially in our communities of color," Cuomo said.
After he was declared brain dead, Gabay was taken off a respirator at Kings County Hospital Center and pronounced dead on Sept. 16.
Cuomo referenced the mass shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 and at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina in June as he said New York's firearm restrictions are ineffective on their own.
"It's not enough for New York State to pass a gun law and close the front door when the guns are coming in the back door, when the guns can come up from Virginia or South Carolina for anyone willing to take a car ride," he said.
Gabay, the first deputy counsel at Empire State Development, the state's chief economic development agency, was a Harvard-educated lawyer who was raised in public housing in the Bronx by Jamaican immigrant parents. He became an assistant counsel for Cuomo in 2011 after working in finance.
A police spokeswoman said on Saturday that no arrests have been made in the case. Police released a surveillance video two weeks ago that shows two men apparently armed with handguns running into a building near the site of the shooting.
Police also released a sketch of a suspect who is wanted for questioning in connection with the shooting. The suspect was described as a 19- to 20-year-old black man wearing a white T-shirt, black pants and a Jamaican flag around his neck.
"I met Pope Francis this week, and a big part of me wanted to ask Pope Francis the same question: Pope, why? Why would God take Carey?" Cuomo said. "The Lord gives us no answers. Instead, the Lord gives us faith."
Trenton, NJ — In 2009, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that police could only violate your 4th Amendment rights by warrantlessly searching you, if they prove two key factors first. Those two key factors, or two-pronged test, required both probable cause and a reason to believe evidence might disappear, or the safety of the officer or public would be at risk if the search were delayed to obtain a warrant.
However, on Thursday, the court overturned its meager rights-protecting decision from 2009. In an ominous 5-2 decision, the state Supreme Court gave police even more power and opportunity to violate the rights of the citizens.
The court’s decision stemmed from a case in which a Salem County man was found with an ‘illegal’ handgun after he was pulled over for his headlights being too bright.
William L. Witt was pulled over on Route 48 in Carneys Point in December 2012 after he approached a police officer with his high beams on and “failed to dim” as he passed. After speaking with Witt, the officer concluded he was intoxicated, performed a field sobriety test and placed him under arrest, according to NJ.com.
After arresting Witt for an alleged DUI, police officers then illegally searched his car without a warrant and without Witt’s consent. During this unlawful search, police found an unregistered handgun.
Citing the 2009 decision, Witt fought to suppress the fact that he merely wanted to protect himself with a handgun by claiming that the police performed an unreasonable search in violation of the state and federal constitutions.
In May of 2014, New Jersey officials, still showing some semblance of protecting the rights of the people, ruled that the officer did not meet the “exigent circumstances” needed to violate the rights of Witt.
However, that constitutional decision would be short-lived. On Thursday, police were give the authority to search a vehicle without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe there is contraband or evidence of a crime as long as the circumstances that led to the probable cause are unforeseeable and spontaneous.
In other words, cops in New Jersey, can now make up any reason they want to search your private property.
“One can only wonder why the State and the majority of this Court find it appropriate to turn from the progressive approach historically taken in this State to privacy and constitutional rights of motorists,” Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote in her dissent.
The door has once again been left wide open for abuse by police in searching vehicles. With the billions stolen annually from innocent people in the name of civil asset forfeiture, does it seem like a good idea to give police even more power to violate the rights of the citizens?
Perhaps the five judges who voted in favor of warrantless searches wanted a raise.
In an Orwellian fashion, acting Attorney General John Hoffman says the ruling achieves an appropriate balance between protecting constitutional rights and public safety.
Those who support this ridiculous breach of the privacy of citizens have taken to the internet by repeating the call of the slave, “If you aren’t doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about.”
But what they really mean is, “Why have any rights at all? Rights must only be for criminals.”
Residents say people were fishing on the lake last Saturday, but it drained like a bathtub overnight. Bauer has lived near this lake his entire life. This is the first time he’s ever seen it run dry. He and other residents want answers.
Pacific Gas & Electric Company owns the rights to the water and uses it for hydroelectric power.
It’s the situation we worked hard to avoid but the reality is we’re in a very serious drought, there’s also concerns for the fish downstream,” said spokesman Paul Moreno.
Bauer says there should’ve been at least two weeks of water left and that would’ve given PG&E enough time to relocate the fish.
“This makes me feel like they didn’t want to do a fish rescue and that it was easier to open that sucker up Saturday night,” Bauer said.
PG&E officials say nobody opened the dam up and the water simply ran out.
No matter who’s to blame, residents here worry, this could happen in other areas of the state.
“The reservoirs are all continuing to be far below normal,” said Doug Carlson with the Department of Water Resources.
He says there’s no question water concerns are still a serious issue across the state.
“We are reliant upon rainfall to fill those lakes of course and until we get more rain we’re not likely to see any appreciable increase in the reservoir levels,” he said.
At Folsom Lake, workers are finishing work on floating barges that would pump water to the city of Folsom and the prison if the lake gets too low for the water to flow through an intake valve. An insurance policy that may be put into use soon.
