Free Republic

ROCKVILLE, MD — Thousands of motorists were brought to a standstill when police conducted a massive roadblock to find three crime suspects. Twelve lanes of traffic were shut down and swarms of armed government agents combed through a giant traffic jam performing warrantless vehicle-to-vehicle searches. The busy Tuesday morning commute was abruptly halted just after 10:00 a.m. on March 11th. One driver told ABC News that traffic stopped and he witnessed 30 police cars pass on the shoulders of I-270 near Rockville. “Then, when I saw a wall of police officers with automatic weapons approaching our cars, it was apparent...

Annals of the Security State: More Airplane Stories James Fallows May 21 2013 "My dad fought a war so this can never happen in America. I will not dishonor my father's memory by giving up what he fought for. No, sir. With all due respect, I will not consent to a search without a proper warrant." Over the weekend I related the story of Gabriel Silverstein, a businessman and pilot who for no apparent reason was subjected to a two-hour detention and invasive search by Homeland Security officials as he traveled across the country in his small plane. The picture...

The whole notion of the police "manhunt" is not a new American phenomenon. Cops chase bad guys, cops corner bad guys. Sometimes the bad guys give up quietly, sometimes they go down in a blaze of glory. But we've always had rules of engagement when it came to law enforcement interaction with the general public.

There were two components to last week's shelter-in-place request in Watertown, Massachusetts. The first was a request that people not to leave home. The second was a door-to-door search by heavily armed law enforcement officials. Those are two very different things, with different implications. But neither was illegal.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.— In a ruling issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Burlison v. Springfield Public Schools, the court deemed a Missouri school district’s policy of imposing a “lockdown” of the school for the purpose of allowing the local sheriff’s department, aided by drug-sniffing dogs, to perform mass inspections of students’ belongings to be a “reasonable procedure to maintain the safety and security of students at the school,” and not a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of students. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute had challenged the school district’s practice of conducting random lockdowns and...

December’s tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School has prompted lawmakers across the country to propose stringent gun laws. Washington state legislators now say maybe they’ve gone too far. Washington’s SB 5737 – 2013-14, introduced Feb.13 by three Seattle Democrats, like many similar bills, includes an outright assault weapons ban. Individuals already possessing an assault weapon are “allowed” to retain them, but with the proviso that the owners submit themselves to annual police home inspections. “They always say, we’ll never go house to house to take your guns away,” said Lance Palmer, a Seattle trial lawyer and self-described liberal to...

TEXAS - Two Irving women are suing two Texas State troopers and the director of the Department of Public Safety after they say they were violated, during what they call an unconstitutional search, when they were subjected to a roadside cavity search in full view of the public and without probable cause. On July 13, while driving along State Highway 161, Angel Dobbs and her niece Ashley Dobbs were stopped for littering by Trooper David Ferrell. In the dashcam video released by the women and their attorney, Ferrell can be heard telling the women they would both be cited for...

guess Alex Jones is still crazy?? He has been talking about this for months. Bend over and take it America. Don't be upset, this is all done in love and it is all for freedom! Everyone lets sing the Sean Hannity song together...let freedom ring, let the white dove sing...." I love freedom!

In a case that stemmed from an investigation by D.C. police and the FBI of a local drug dealer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that police across the country need a warrant if they want to track suspects using GPS monitors. In the ruling, which was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the court found that even though the case involved a GPS unit that was attached to a car that was out in the open, it still constituted a "search" under the language of the Fourth Amendment: It is important to be clear about what occurred in this...

An all-too-familiar sight at LAX and the rest of the nation’s airports will soon be coming to the city’s busiest train station. KNX 1070′s Pete Demetriou reports rail passengers have started seeing Transportation Security Administration on patrol at Union Station on a more frequent basis. As many as 25 VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention & Response) teams began patrolling train stations nationwide last summer conducting an estimated 9,300 “suspicionless” spot searches of travelers. The agency has said the presence of officers with explosive detection dogs, radiation monitors and other devices will act as a deterrent in the nation’s busiest travel hubs.

"We know that the debt is now 100 percent -- approximately 100 percent of (gross domestic product)," said Allan Meltzer, a professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "That doesn't include the unfunded liabilities. It doesn't include (mortgage lenders)Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It doesn't include a number of other things." Chris Edwards, Director of Tax Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, argues that U.S. debt is so far out of control that it must be contained soon. "We've had five trillion (in) deficit spending since 2008, the most enormous sort...

Fresh off Sunday night’s taser-fueled fan violence at Metlife Stadium in New Jersey, the NFL will conduct pat downs from the ankles up this season. In the past, the pat downs went from the waist up. “The enhanced security procedures recommended by our office before the start of the season will further increase the safety of fans but will require some additional time,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told USA T0day in a statement Thursday. “We encourage fans to come early, enjoy their tailgating tradition, and be patient as they enter the stadium.”

VIPR Searches and the American Citizen: 'Dominate. Intimidate. Control.' By John W. Whitehead 7/5/2011 "They're trying to scare the pants off the American people that we need these things... Fear is a commodity and they're selling it. The more they can sell it, the more we buy into it. When American people are afraid, they will accept anything."--Kate Hanni, passengers' rights advocate "Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government...Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and...

Last weekend, a Tennessee woman was arrested at the Nashville airport for disorderly conduct after she refused TSA security measures for her children. The woman didn’t want her two children to have to go through a whole-body-imaging scanner. When a Transportation Security Administration officer told her the machines were safe, she said, “I still don’t want someone to see our bodies naked.” She won’t be pleased with a ruling then out of the D.C. Circuit today. This morning, the federal court ruled that the “naked scans” of air travelers do not violate Americans’ constitutional rights. Privacy rights group EPIC had...

An elderly woman in the late-stages of leukemia was forced to undergo 45 minutes of additional screenings last Saturday when she tried to board a flight out of Northwest Florida Regional Airport, her daughter told FoxNews.com Lena Reppert, 95, was to say her final goodbyes to her daughter before she made what would most likely be her last flight to her native Michigan. After eight years of battling leukemia, doctors say she doesn’t have much time to live. “She said she wanted to be closer to her grave,” Jean Weber, her daughter, told FoxNews.com. “I knew it would probably...

Reporting from Washington— The Supreme Court gave police more leeway to break into homes or apartments in search of illegal drugs when they suspect the evidence otherwise might be destroyed. Ruling in a Kentucky case Monday, the justices said that officers who smell marijuana and loudly knock on the door may break in if they hear sounds that suggest the residents are scurrying to hide the drugs. Residents who "attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame" when police burst in, said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. for an 8-1 majority. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-search-20110517,0,6746878.story

Officers may break in if they hear sounds and suspect that evidence is being destroyed, the justices say in an 8-1 decision. Justice Ginsburg dissents. The Supreme Court gave police more leeway to break into homes or apartments in search of illegal drugs when they suspect the evidence otherwise might be destroyed. Ruling in a Kentucky case Monday, the justices said that officers who smell marijuana and loudly knock on the door may break in if they hear sounds that suggest the residents are scurrying to hide the drugs. Residents who "attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame"...

In response to a legal challenge to their warrant-less searches of air travelers, the Department of Homeland Security advanced the argument that it is authorized to conduct whatever searches it wants, whenever it wants, and wherever it wants. “Our mandate under the Patriot Act is to keep this country safe,” said Secretary Janet Napolitano. “We cannot shy away from this duty out of misplaced concern for privacy lest the enemies of our government exploit such a weakness for their own malicious ends.” Napolitano asserted that “air travelers or anyone venturing into any public place is assumed to have given implied...

My brother sent me a carton full of beautifully wrapped and beribboned Christmas packages, most of them containing clothes but a few containing plastic model airplanes for my son. When I opened the carton I found that a number of the packages had been slit up one of the short sides and the side flaps of the box pushed in so that anyone could see what was inside. I could only imagine that this was done for security purposes. Is this standard, now--to slice open Christmas presents and check to see what's inside them? I was a bit shocked, especially...

Americans A-OK with TSA? Don’t bet on it December 1, 2010 BY JACOB SULLUM jsullum@reason.com According to the Transportation Security Administration, Americans have no problem with the new airport screening procedures. So they should stop complaining. That self-contradictory reassurance, which would be unnecessary if it were true, seemed slightly more plausible after chaos failed to ensue from protests by Thanksgiving travelers who refused to walk through the TSA’s full-body scanners last week. But there are reasons to question the TSA’s portrait of placid passengers happily baring all for the sake of homeland security. First of all, the TSA’s numbers are...