by John W. Whitehead. It’s one thing to know and exercise your rights when a police officer pulls you over, but what rights do you have when a private cop—entrusted with all of the powers of a government cop but not held to the same legal standards—pulls you over and subjects you to a stop-and-frisk or, worse, causes you to “disappear” into a ... MORE
by Andrew Napolitano. What if the current massive spying on Americans began with an innocent secret executive order signed by President Reagan in 1986? What if Reagan contemplated that he was only authorizing American spies to spy on foreign spies unlawfully present in the U.S.? What if Reagan knew and respected the history of the ... MORE
by Nicole Johnson. If only the Fourth Amendment protected us from warrantless searches. DUI checkpoints in North Dakota could soon be a thing of the past. Sobriety checkpoints are used in North Dakota by police to deter drunk driving. But, lawmakers in Bismarck are talking about getting rid of them, saying there needs to be a reason to ... MORE
It won't be the government. While the Western world was watching and grieving over the slaughter in Paris last week, and my colleagues in the media were fomenting a meaningless debate about whether President Obama should have gone to Paris to participate in a televised parade, the feds took advantage of that diversion to reveal even more ... MORE
No warrant required. Text of the Fourth Amendment. A federal judge decided earlier this month to accept evidence from an automobile search that a state court magistrate had declared unlawful. US District Judge Jerome B. Simandle insisted that there was nothing wrong in accepting the evidence deemed tainted by the New Jersey Superior Court. ... MORE
A very docile populace. Tea Party protesters, some Republicans, and many libertarians perceive the federal government as a vast engine of oppression. But are anti-Obama activists mistaken in presuming that most Americans still care about freedom? A Gallup poll released in July asked a thousand Americans, “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your ... MORE
by Marc Saggese. They go by a number of different names: DUI checkpoints, administrative roadblocks, mobile checkpoints, or as they are referred to by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, sobriety checkpoints. No matter the title, they all have the same effect: to allow the police to stop your vehicle for no articulable reason, ask ... MORE
by John W. Whitehead. With Orwellian irony, the U.S. Supreme Court chose December 15, National Bill of Rights Day to deliver its crushing blow to the Fourth Amendment. Although the courts have historically held that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law, in its 8-1 ruling in Heien v. State of North Carolina, the ... MORE
Court rules Fourth Amendment still applies. A new rule in Texas will stop a warrantless search of a DWI suspect's blood. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals says the move violates the Fourth Amendment. "We hold that a nonconsensual search of a DWI suspect's blood conducted pursuant to the mandatory-blood draw and implied-consent provisions in ... MORE
from the Washington Times. Invoking the Constitution is the common rhetoric of many politicians who swore to follow and defend it, but a lot of them have obviously never read it, or if they have, didn’t understand it. The Founding Fathers wrote it in plain English, simple enough for even a lawyer to understand, but some politicians ... MORE
by Jeffrey Folks. “I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. That is the chief meaning of freedom.” Those words are taken from Calvin Coolidge’s Inaugural Address of March 4, 1925. Even then, conservatives like Coolidge were battling ... MORE
Don't trust your freedom to the government. Earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey gave an interview to "60 Minutes" during which he revealed a flawed understanding of personal freedom. He rightly distinguished what FBI agents do in their investigations of federal crimes from what the NSA does in its intelligence gathering, when the ... MORE
by Andrew Napolitano. While the political commentators in the nation's capital are wrapped up in the debate over what to do about ISIS, and as one third of the Senate and nearly all members of the House campaign for re-election, the president's spies continue to capture massive amounts of personal information about hundreds of ... MORE
by Steve Wilson. Your public servants at work. Vampire movies, books and TV series are all of the rage these days. Guess the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol wanted to get in on the act. Over the long Labor Day weekend, the patrol ran a no-refusal DUI
checkpoint in Oxford, home of the University of Mississippi. In a
no-refusal checkpoint, a ... MORE