We're the Only Ones Who Don't Need No Stinking Warrants Enough

In a 3-0 ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the police were justified in conducting the warrantless search and seizure in an era of unprecedented domestic carnage at schools, workplaces and shopping malls.

“Police, then, simply must be entitled to take effective preventive action when evidence surfaces of an individual who intends slaughter,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the panel. “Respecting the rights of individuals has never required running a risk of mass death.”

Define "risk," Jim, I mean, J. Harvie. Because I gotta tell ya, the risk of an activist judiciary subverting the Constitution in general and the Bill of Rights in particular--all in the name of expedience--scares the hell out of me a lot more than some guy who voluntarily calls a hotline and lets everybody know where he is.

If someone is an immediate threat, there's nothing in the law prohibiting an intervention, and nothing to make crime scene evidence inadmissible. But simultaneously with the threat being neutralized, perhaps you could explain why requiring "The Only Ones" to swear out an affidavit and obtain a warrant in accordance with the clear probable cause mandate you are required to abide by (or would be in the Constitutional Republic envisioned by the Framers) is such a burden on the state...? Aside from maybe having to drag some judge's hind end out of bed at 3:00 AM on occasion...?

Originally nominated by Reagan, eh? Considered for SCOTUS by the "Vote Freedom First President" (until you opened your self-important yap to The New York Times)?

And you consider yourself a "Hands-Off Constitution[alist]"? And getting judges like you appointed is the reason we're supposed to be cowed into voting republican?

[Via Mack]

A Rebuke from the "Right"

Similarly, Judge Richard A. Posner, in an article in The New Republic in August, wrote that Heller’s failure to allow the political process to work out varying approaches to gun control that were suited to local conditions “was the mistake that the Supreme Court made when it nationalized abortion rights in Roe v. Wade.”

Yeah, that's just what we need: "home rule" for which rights will be recognized.

Hey, who needs a Fifth Amendment when you're in Chi-Town, anyway, huh? What, this rubber hose? It's in case the suspect gets thirsty under all these lights...

We talked about the other supposed "conservative," J. Harvie Wilkinson III (and tell me that name doesn't sound like it belongs cheating at bridge at Thurston Howell's country club) a while back, and again a while back further, and I gotta tell you, they just don't make "prominent" judges like they used to.

Consider, for example, William Rawle, a contemporary of the Founders, the man George Washington wanted as the first attorney general, and whose "View of the Constitution" was the "go to" resource at Harvard and Dartmouth until the mid-Nineteenth Century, who wrote:

“No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give the Congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under a general pretence [sic] by a state legislature. But if in any pursuit of an inordinate power either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.”

We can listen to him or we can listen to Dickie and Harvie. Come to think of it, if we listen to them, we might actually resolve things sooner.

[Via Zachary G]

Secondhand Experience

Male solitude may have heroic manifestations, as in the movie “Shane.” It may give rise to ultimately affirming personal introspection, as with Henry Fleming in “The Red Badge of Courage.” It may even have companionable dimensions, as with the aging fisherman and the boy Manolin in “The Old Man and the Sea.” [More]

How telling, that the only sources J. Harvie Wilkinson III evidently has to draw on for admirable, independent and strong male role models are fictional.

[Via Mack H]