This should be blown to pieces in the (federal) Supreme Court.

As much as I am loath to admit it, I actually believe the conservative members of the court will shoot this down given the chance. It's in blatant violation of the 4th amendment protection against unreasonable seizure, the 5th amendment's Due Process clause, if people get so much as a whiff of minorities being targeted more than others there is probably grounds for a 14th amendment argument...

Basically, I am saying this ruling is SO bad, even Scalia can't fuck it up unless he wants to be at odds with his publicly stated stances on the limits of government power.

Oh, and lets not forget the probable 1st Amendment argument. This ruling could be used to suppress protests. IE: One protester gets arrested, the police then round up all of them as "possible accomplices."

Basically, I can't think of a use for this ruling that doesn't result in some legal grounds for appeal. Any lawyers in the house case to jump in?

The conservative Supremes can pleasantly surprise non-insane folk from time to time. But if women are being fucked over, they tend to contort the Constitution into non-Euclidean shapes to maintain the status quo. And the only minority the current cabal ever cared about was Bush voters in Florida.

Aren't his stances on the limits of government power really just about the federal government, though? Wouldn't this be a "states rights!" thing?

If the supreme court agrees with this interpretation, then this would be in effect across the entire country, including federal law enforcement. Unless they give an unprecedented ruling that only Connecticut is bound by their ruling, then by their own rhetoric they HAVE to stop this.

That is not how it works. The supreme court can not judge if the state law is in accordance with the state Constitution. That is outside their jurisdiction. They can only judge if the state law violates the Constitution of the US. A state can give more protection than the federal government, it can not give less. An adverse ruling by the US supreme court would have no bearing on how the supreme courts of other states interpret their state law in accordance with their state Constitutions. They are welcome to decide that their state Constitution gives more protection than that buttfuck Scalia says the federal constitution grants.

Except that is exactly how it works. This is not a question of "does this state law run contrary to the constitution" this is an interpretation of a set rules that governs police conduct. Much like the Miranda laws, though the area in question was New Mexico, I believe. Since the question was not of a local ordinance, but of a universal question "can a suspect that is ignorant of their rights actually practice those rights?"

The same basic idea here, it's not that Connecticut has a special law allowing this, it's that the court claims existing laws can be interpreted to allow police these special rights. This this absolutely would be something applied universally, just like Miranda was, once decided by the Supreme Court.

Also, just to point out cases were the Supreme Court absolutely over-ruled lower states interpretation of the law, and how their ruling are from that point defacto interpretations of the law hence fourth:

Atkins v. Virginia - Virginia had no laws governing the execution of mentally retarded people. The Supreme Court ruled that executing retarded people was contrary to the the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments. They did however leave the door open for each state to define what makes someone mentally handicapped.

Miranda v. Arizona - The court established that if someone is ignorant of their rights, they can not exercise them. (I incorrectly thought it was New Mexico)

Brown v. Board of Education - The Supreme court in this case ruled that state laws were in obvious violation of the constitution. This forced schools and the rest of society to desegregate.

Honestly, I am wondering how you could fail civil studies so thoroughly? This is exactly the function of the Supreme Court, and always has been?

Oh, ignore me. I just noticed I missed the "state" part of "state constitution."

But on that note, yes, the Supreme Court totally has jurisdiction here. They are interpreting law in a way that violates several basic rights, (1st, 4th, and 5th.) Regardless if their state constitution allows this, the federal does not. Once the case it heard, all interpretations of laws that establish police rights vs suspect rights HAVE TO BE INTERPRETED the same way.

No. The state, who may have similar provisions in their own Constitution, can interpret their Constitution to grant more protection than the federal Constitution does. They have to interpret the federal Constitution as the supreme court says ( though ballsier judge will go against it to give the feds another chance to get it right). For example, if the Supreme Court were to decide that denial of gay marriage did not violate the equal protection clause of the US Constitution, the Supreme Court of California could, while interpreting the federal Constitution as dictated by the supreme court, nevertheless decide that it did violate the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. They do not have to interpret their state Constitution and what it protects the same way the Supreme court interprets analogous rights in the Federal Constitution.

http://uscivilliberties.org/themes/4527-state-constitutional-distinctions.html

Here is a short article on the issue from the ACLU. It notes that areas of criminal procedure are ones that the state often offers more protection than the federal Constitution.

There are many law reviews available on the issue as well. Including one by Justice Brennen that list many of the relevant cases. They do note, however, that if a state has a long history of interpreting their consitution as the Feds interpret the Federal constitution, the Supreme Court is less likely to take seriously arguments that things where decided upon interdependent state grounds.

"this ruling is SO bad, even Scalia can't fuck it up unless he wants to be at odds with his publicly stated stances on the limits of government power."

Scalia has contradicted his own rulings before, so that's not entirely reassuring.

We have a legislative branch that refuses to legislate and a judicial branch that seems hellbent on destroying any semblance of justice. This is why we can't have nice things.

Don't forget the "security" agency that is storing a copy of most of all digital communications and is cross referencing it with your location and credit/banking details. Or the "intelligence" agency that spies on our government officials. (How do like that? assholes.) OR our "law enforcement" agencies that target and shuts down peaceful protest because they threaten the status quo.

Nope. No police state here ;)

It suddenly makes sense why you spend weeks in the wilderness.

y'know I'm not even a survivalist or anything, like many people tend to assume. I just prefer the serenity of it. I get tons of reading and personal projects done. And the disconnect makes it a lot easier to appreciate life when I'm not being constantly inundated with advertising telling me how much happier I would be if I bought the latest stuff or the news telling me how horrible the world is.

Shhhh... I wanna imagine you building tree houses and fashioning your own loin cloths.

Whatever gets you there ;)

I just like being able to piss off of the front porch without freaking out the neighbors.

I have claimed so many trees over the past few years.

Is that all? I'm sure there are neighborhoods where nobody cares what you do off of, on top of, or any other direction you'd care to name of your front porch.

All I'm saying is, in The Stand, my hog would have made Flagg scream.

...writing his manifesto.

I prefer 'personal mythos' :)

Ooh, good call; "manifesto" sounds too crazy.

Well, as I recall, you called it brain damage. so... :P

Florida Manifesto

I think Tim Dorsey has that covered.

Because the republicans control SCOTUS and they know they just have to sit back and play the long game by blocking anything Obama tries to do.

Oh, I know the immediate reason why it's a mess. But there's a structural issue at hand, too. By the very nature of how we assign representative districts, rural areas will have a stronger presence in the House than urban areas. Republicans have done a nice trick of associating their party with rural values like religion, gun ownership, and "small" government. Unless that association gets broken, or we decide rural and urban areas should have equal representation, I don't see any change in the near future.

Given the US' move to everybody carrying firearms (and Connecticut being an open-carry (after meeting minimal criteria) state), this isn't surprising. I suspect more states will respond to armed citizenry with legal measures like this.

I figured it was more about stopping people from making videos of them.

You're probably correct but I suspect that the open-carry situation will make it easier for the police to make their case for self-protection. After all, they cannot make a legitimate case against the public filming them abusing innocents.

What case needs to be made? If you're able to round up whoever you want for whatever reason you want, you get the stuff they're carrying, which includes the recording devices and their memory cards.

Unless you've got live-streaming or some kind of auto-uploading method that's not terribly cumbersome and/or automatic (not to mention a really beefy data plan and a network that's probably much more robust than what we've got now), I'm sure one's recording devices will meet with an unfortunate accident.

We've had a police state for years. Years. I can remember in the '90's a good friend of mine, a law school classmate, saying so.

It really doesn't matter what the law says--all it takes is force, and the state can use the existing laws to do what they want because the wheels of justice grind very slowly. One still has to counteract force as well as its effect, and that will take time.

About 2 months ago I helped a young man beat a felony rap--the only charge of his African-American life of 21 years--and that evening he was arrested by the local police on trumped up charges. He spent a night in jail but got out before the weekend. That's a sneaky kind of social terrorism which I despise.