Supreme Court Punches Another Hole in the Bill of Rights

Creating a 4th Amendment loophole.   The Supreme Court failed to keep a lid on police excesses with its ruling this week in a Kentucky drug case.


50,000 Americans died or were wounded so we could
have a the Bill of Rights


In the American Revolution tens of thousands died or were wounded so we could live under a system of laws and not at the whim of a Big Brother Dictatorship.

But modern Americans live in FEAR on a 24-7 basis.  Fear of crime, fear of rap music, fear of drugs, fear of fast food . . . . the list of fears goes on and on.  But "answer" to all of our fears always comes back to giving more and more power to Big Brother Government.

The U.S. Supreme Court has acted again to slice away another part of our hard won freedoms.  The So-called "Conservatives" on the court joined hand in hand with the Liberals in a giant group hug and then everyone broke into a chorus of Kumbaya.  

The bi-partisan 8-1 decision came in the case of a search of an apartment in Kentucky by police who suspected illegal drugs were being destroyed. The police, who said they smelled marijuana near the apartment, had knocked loudly on the door and shouted, "This is the police." Then, after hearing noises they thought indicated the destruction of evidence, they broke down the door.

Overturning the Kentucky Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that as long as the police officers' behavior was lawful, the fact that it produced an exigent circumstance didn't violate the Constitution. That would be the case, Alito suggested, even if a police officer acted in bad faith in an attempt to evade the warrant requirement.

In the lone dissent:   "(Alito's reasoning) arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, never mind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant."   ----  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

As the delegates to the Constitutional Convention wrangled over the precise form of the document for governing their new nation some delegates refused to sign a draft because it did not include a bill of rights, a feature typical of the constitutions of the several states. Those delegates wanted there to be no question that certain rights were to be honored by the federal government, and this issue was so important to the Anti-Federalists that they used the absence of a bill of rights as reason enough to not ratify the Constitution.

Eventually, it was agreed to include a Bill of Rights comprised of 10 amendments in the Constitution of the United States of America.

Sample 1770s armed "thug" representing a Big Brother
Government which is more than willing to kill you and
take away your freedoms. 

The 4th Amendment is about as plain a statement of the sanctity of one’s home, person and personal property as can be made, and it states as clearly as it can be stated that strict procedures must be followed in order to suspend the right of citizens to be free of government intrusion, even when there is legitimate suspicion that a crime may have been committed.

So, how do we explain educated people, trained in the law, and presumably fluent in the King’s English, failing to understand this simple, straightforward, and unambiguous statement — a forthright guarantee of the personal right to privacy?

The 4th Amendment is what separates the United States from tyrannical police states.   But I suspect that our Federalist Founders would not recognize the centralized Big Brother state we have created.

For more on this story