Ruling on padlock law due next week (My take: Seize private prop. for 2 oz. pot)

A judge will determine in the next couple of weeks if Battle Creek City Commissioners can padlock a woman's home. Calhoun County Circuit Judge Conrad Sindt said he should complete his written opinion next week or the week after on a challenge to the city's padlock ordinance, which allows city officials to force a resident out of his or her home for repeated drug violations.

What's worse: Being forcing to house soldiers in your home, or having your home taken away from you?

I'd quickly say the latter, wouldn't you? So how come our Constitution expressly prohibits the state from doing something that is NOT as intrusive and abusive of individual rights as other things that the state goes right ahead and does? IOW, if the Constitution prohibits the state from slapping my face, how come the state can go right ahead and cut my throat? That's what forfeiture laws do -- they go beyond what the Constitution expressly prohibits!

Unless I am making a bomb or causing injury to some person, or concealing evidence of a crime, the state has NO RIGHT to enter (much less seize) my home.

Too bad the current U.S. Supreme Court doesn't agree with me.

But then, unlike them, I'm a strict constructionalist who is on the side of individual rights.

It is way past time that we eliminate the War on Drugs.

After billions of dollars in taxpayer money, years of incarcerating people who have not harmed anyone but perhaps themselves, statistics prove that we have not made a dent in the number of people using drugs. In 1913, 1.3% of the population used heroin and cocaine and today, the number is about the same.

The real difference is that we have over 2,000,000 people in this country behind bars and have created a whole lot of felons who are now behind the 8-ball.

If we legalized all drugs and supervised their use, spent about 50% of what it takes to incarcerate a person on a treatment program, things might change.

Prohibition only increased alcohol use and finally, the law was repealed. The War on Drugs is a failure, time to move on and seek better solutions.

A real problem with seeking solutions is that a lot of people have a lot invested in the War on Drugs and they might have to find something else to do.

Tough, better to eliminate the asset forfeiture laws, no-knock raids, taking peoples home for a lousy $10 of marijuana, and creating another 2,000,000 felons in this country during the next decade.

How many more innocent people do we want SWAT teams to kill in trying to enforce "unenforceable" laws.

... I'm a strict constructionalist who is on the side of individual rights.

Better yet, you're an Anti-Federalist. Were it not for those Anti-Federalist Founding Fathers, we wouldn't have a Bill of Rights. Can you imagine how long this country would have lasted without those first ten amendments?

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