We are engaged in a War On Drugs, a War on Poverty and various other so-called domestic war misnomers. We have failed to name this War on Islamic Terrorism accurately, as it orders of magnitude above the examples of ‘war’ cited above. Ask any Frogman if waterboarding is torture, it’s part or their routine Seal training.
All of which have zero Constitutional justification.
In fact, the War on Drugs in particular has been instrumental in eroding the Bill of Rights; in fact here's a little list from an older post:
Amendment 10 — Destroyed by combining “necessary and proper” with the intrastate/interstate regulation of Wickard.
Amendment 9 — Everything. Seriously, EVERYTHING about the War on Drugs is about the federal government exercising powers not expressly delegated by the Constitution.
From Justice Thomas’s Dissent in Raich:“If the Federal Government can regulate growing a half-dozen cannabis plants for personal consumption (not because it is interstate commerce, but because it is inextricably bound up with interstate commerce), then Congress’ Article I powers – as expanded by the Necessary and Proper Clause – have no meaningful limits.”Amendment 8 — Mandatory minimums and zero tolerance combine to make the punishments outweigh many of the “crimes”, even is you accept the crime as valid.
Amendment 7 — In [civil] asset forfeiture, the victims are routinely denied jury-trials even though the amount in controversy exceeds $20.
Amendment 6 — The clogging of the courts with drug-related cases erodes the notion of a “speedy trial” to a joke. Often drug charges are added on to the list of crimes, which can “taint” the jury w/ prejudices. Often police act on informants whose identities are “protected”, which impairs the ability to confront the accuser.
Amendment 5 — How does “Comprehensive Forfeiture Act of 1984” comply with “No person shall [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”?
Amendment 4 — Kentucky v King”The Fourth Amendment expressly imposes two requirements: All searches and seizures must be reasonable; and a warrant may not be issued unless probable cause is properly established and the scope of the authorized search is set out with particularity. [...] The proper test follows from the principle that permits warrantless searches: warrantless searches are allowed when the circumstances make it reasonable, within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment , to dispense with the warrant requirement.”In other words:Yes, the fourth amendment requires warrants for searches, but… fuck that!
Amendment 3 — [Nope, nothing here... yet.]
Amendment 2 — Arguably, the “prohibited persons” from the `68 GCA.
Amendment 1 — Religious freedom is denied via the war on drugs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Division_v._Smith ), there are stories of “legalization”-advocacy publishers being raided/harassed. So, that’s 90% of the amendments in the Bill of Rights.
If that's not cause for concern, and impetus for stopping the War on Drugs then is there anything that cannot be done in its name?
We have failed to name this War on Islamic Terrorism accurately, as it orders of magnitude above the examples of ‘war’ cited above. Ask any Frogman if waterboarding is torture, it’s part or their routine Seal training.
I'd agree that the War on Terror is stupidly named — the truly terrible truth is that these War on [Idea] are deliberately on ideas so that they cannot be won, and they are used to subvert the constraints of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Don't like no-knock searches? Then you're against the War on Drugs and therefore morally evil! (That's essentially the same emotional-response you'll get when you bring up the right to bear arms for ex-felons, you know: those who have served their sentence.)