There are some Irisih Republicans that might disagree with you on that.

I tend to dislike the exclusionary rule from a slightly different take than most conservatives, I suspect. Or perhaps not. The problem with the exclusionary rule is that it risks setting free people who are clearly guilty. Rather than do that, judges (and ultimately justices) bend over backwards to find that rights don't actually exist, for example finding that one has no expectation of privacy in a building with closed curtains located behind not one but two fences. That's just dumb, as it's because of the exclusionary rule. If the question had been brought up in the context of a civil rights invasion suit by an innocent party being surveilled by the police, I think the justices (and likely most conservatives), would come out the other way.

So: what's the proposal for an alternative.

am I on ignore?

No, just incomprehensible.

But didn't you always find Cousin It amusing?

Like when the autistic kid dunks on you.
 

Damn. This must be what Yankee fans felt like when the BoSox came back to win the LCS.

When you quit posting at about the same time balt started posting more, and posting confidently, I was sad. I always thought the two of you were intellectual equals and knew you could be soulmates if only you were posting at the same time. and now you've proven me right! thank you.

Like when the autistic kid dunks on you.
 

You say that because you know I'm a Mets fan, right? Bastard.

Like when the autistic kid dunks on you.
 

You or i can't 1-up Ironweed. Think of the life he leads: glamorous dinner parties or meals out at the trendy nite-spots, rubbing elbows with all the TCOTU bigwigs.

working all day on really important things that matter-really matter- to the world economy. A big NY lawyer like weed, his most routine project we'd see as the most important file of our careers.

Partying all over Soho or Tribeca, or probably some other neighborhood you and i have not heard of yet. Sex with actresses that you and i pay money to see in the celeb magazines.


No. Ironweed has us both beat. all we can do is hurl impotent spears at him- he's like the alien ships from independance Day and we shooting missiles- before the virus kicked in.

Bias or Coincidence?
 

Bias or Coincidence?
 

Good photography.

In England if your rights have been violated you bring an action against the police. That way the perpetrators of the offense (the police) are the ones punished, not the victims of the original crime.

Theoretical opinions of why systems without the exclusionary rule won’t work aren’t relevant because we have practical examples in many countries. Are there consistent and egregious violations against personal rights committed by the police in England because of their lack of the exclusionary rule?

I thought you didn't like trial lawyers.

This is the first time I've heard you suggest that we should follow Western Europe in anything.

That the suggestion comes in the context of protecting Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights is something I find particularly curious.

I won't debate the exclusionary rule. I think that without a rule protecting citizens from unlawful search and seizure, you've no business calling yourself a democracy (and utterly no business at all prancing around telling any other nation they'd better become a democracy).

But regarding your first point, you can sue the police here. You can also sue the fed govt, the states, the city and any other municipal entity you can serve. But sovereign immunity and exceedingly high standards make the chance of success really low, unless you've got some Rodney King or Abner Louima type of case. Trya a 1983 against the cops. The standard is next to impossible to reach unless the behavior is so egregious that there's no question the case must be settled immediately.

Shhhh. Spanky doesn't realize that you can sue the police here, too, but that his fellow tort-reformers have made it all but impossible to win.

He also doesn't realize that if such suits were easier to win, the by virtue of respondeat superiore you would still be punishing society at large.

Which one of you guys get the win against Spanky? Way. To. Go. !!!!!

I can't believe I am even having to argue this. The exclusionary rule destroys confidence in our legal system. In almost every cop show, TV movie and any other show about the police criminals are getting off because of the Exclusoinary rule. The exclusionary rule is the most consistently and universally aspect of our criminal justice system that is critisized. Whether or not that is reality is not that important. In public life perception is reality.

And why shouldn't this rule lessen people's confidence in our system's ability to dispense justice. Only a person that has had their mind twisted by law school could come up with a rationalization of why the corpse of a tortured and molested four year old child found in a molesters home could not be used as evidence because the police didn't get the right search warrant. Such an idea goes against common sense. If people don't respect the legal system it can't operate efficienty. As long as we have the exclusionary rule the average person won't respect our system or lawyers.

The one main argument for the exclusionary rule is that it protects our rights. Without it the police would trudge over our rights willy nilly. Well if that is the case, why doesn't this happen in any other country? Are civil liberties consistenly trounced and disregarded in England, Denmark, Norway and Holland? Has their lack of an exclusionary rule turned them into police states? NO. So then why can't we do the same? Do the people in these countrys possess some talent our resourcers that we lack? Why do we have to hold on to this rule that has such heinous outcomes when other countrys don't need it?

In addition, the United States seems to have thrived without the exclusionary rule for at least its first one hundred and fifty years of existence. It was just made up by the courts. Why all of a sudden has it become necessary where it wasn't before.

People are saying that guilty people getting off on a technicality doesn't happen much in real life. In my opinion if one murderer or child molester gets off because of a technicality that is one time too many.

In sum:

1) We don't need the rule. Any argument against that is ridiculous on its face because if other democracies can thrive without it, certainly we can.
2) When implemented it can have heinous consequences.
3) It destroys people's confidence in the legal system.

There is simply no reason to keep it.

Nor can I, Spanky. Nor can I. If this twit can't understand why we need to shape criminal justice policy based on what makes good drama on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, then there's just no helping him.

As a member of that society, how would you rather pay?

1) Higher taxes to cover police damages suits (or salaries or insurance).

2) By having criminals roam the streets.

Calling out SD Legislature
 

As the new SD abortion law hurtles its way through the judicial system, commentators are examining the language of the law and uncovering interesting caveats. Prof. Samuel Buell of UT Law School writes in today's LATimes:

• WHAT IF THE Supreme Court overrules Roe vs. Wade by allowing South Dakota's new abortion statute to pass constitutional review? Abortion, which has been governed in our time by constitutional law, again would be a matter of criminal law. The chief question would be: Who goes to prison?
  
  South Dakota's legislators included this language in their new law: "Nothing in this act may be construed to subject the pregnant mother upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty." If abortion is a crime, why excuse the woman from punishment?

Indeed. Buell rather methodically examines and then knocks down possible public policy arguments for such an exception, eventually concluding:

• In truth, if, as the South Dakota Legislature emphatically has said, abortion is a crime against human life, only one explanation exists for the decision to excuse the pregnant woman from criminal responsibility: political strategy. If the public believed that banning abortion would mean jailing women, those who seek to criminalize abortion could not hope to achieve their goal.
  
  Debate about the constitutional right to privacy and the future of Roe vs. Wade should not obscure the serious flaw at the heart of criminal abortion laws. With a legal exemption for the woman, such laws are either intentionally discriminatory or devoid of rational justification. Without such an exemption, they are politically doomed.

He's right. Unless the legislators of SD obtain more pleasure from the sight of the jailing of doctors instead of the women that request their services, then they lack the courage of their professed convictions, such as they are. Bunch of fucking cowards, each and every one of them.

Gattigap

Are you bothered that they're playing politics, or bothered that they're winning?

Both.

If they had this new criminal statute to have criminal punishment of some sort, it would at least have the virtue of being intellectually honest.

If we're entering this beautiful Post-Roe period in which we have a fifty-state debate on when abortion should be illegal and why, we should at least have a debate in which each side is willing to acknowledge the practical effects of its policy. Declaring that abortion is murder (as I believe SD's culture-of-life legislators did declare here) and therefore illegal under almost every circumstance but excusing culpability to a critical actor is preposterous as a matter of public policy, and only makes sense if you're trying to make it politically palatable.

The Army of God just kills the Doctors. They pray for the moms.

Shhhh. You're exposing the Achilles Heel of SD's new law for other legislatures who might try to pass similar measures. This flaw could be the basis upon which to strike it without getting to the privacy issue at the heart of Roe.

1. Do criminal defense for a while. You don't even know what the fuck you're talking about, and you're making an ass out of yourself in this debate. Your comparison of this nation to European nations - as though we were interchangeable (disregarding the innumerable cultural/geographic/size differences) - makes you sound a shade below Mortin Downey. O'Reilly wouldn't hamfistedly make the absurd and uninformed statements you've made on this issue. Until you spend a couple years actually dealing with the police and FBI, I suggest you shy away from this debate.

2. Agreed. But they exceedingly rare. More damage is done by early paroles granted to assuage overcrowding in jails than by th exclusionary rule. A court which has a known guilty party in its hands finds a way around the exclusionary rule.

3. Nonsense. You couldn't hope to back this staement up with a stitch of hard facts. That's your opinion.

If you find Uncle Sam indicting you someday, you'll need it. You'll want it. You'll think differently. Our Govt can ruin innocent people's lives, and it does, every day. Until you've seen it up close, you don't fully understand it. You're talking shit here and you've no fucking clue. If you were investigated - if you were audited - if you stood in court while law enforcement agents perjured themselves - you'd get it. When the mob mentality of any law enforcement agency takes hold and its mindless agents decide you belong in jail, they'll do anything and everything to put you there, rules and ethics and morality be damned. You'll want any rule you can use then. When its the system versus you, and your liberty is on the line, you deserve every benefit the rules can give you.

A big fat duece.

If you guys aren't willing to jail the cops who do bad things, how would you feel if we just cut off body parts instead? Illegal search & seizure, lose of a finger. Beat a perp to death, lose a hand.

SS. Is this a sign of the apocalypse?

The Conservative Crackup over Bush
 

Today's edition of bilmore's favorite newspaper, the LATimes, is running a number of op-ed pieces, largely by conservatives, arguing that Bush sucks and was never really a conservative anyway. Among them is Bruce Bartlett, noted conservative and author of new book Impostor, who writes:

• AS A LIFELONG conservative, I have to be honest: George W. Bush is not one of us and has never been. There can be no denying that he has enacted policies contrary to conservative principles on far too many occasions.
  
  In my view, his greatest failing has been a total lack of control over federal spending — to the point where liberal Democrat Bill Clinton's administration is looking more and more like the "good old days."
  
  According to the Office of Management and Budget, overall spending has increased from 18.4% of the gross domestic product in 2000 to 20.8% this year, an increase of 2.4%. Clinton, by contrast, reduced spending from 22.1% of GDP to 18.4% during his two terms, a reduction of 3.7%. (This is really the best way to look at spending because it holds constant things like inflation that distort dollar figures).
  
  Although much of the Bush increase is accounted for by national security and entitlements such as Medicare, the fact is that domestic discretionary spending has also risen. Education spending, for example, is up 137%, according to Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and spending on community and regional development is up 342%. Moreover, Bush has repeatedly pushed for big projects, such as the manned mission to Mars that NASA can ill afford and that will come at the expense of basic science.
  
  The number of identifiable pork-barrel projects that benefit particular states and congressional districts has risen from 958 in 1996 to 13,999 in 2005, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group. Spending on such projects has risen from $12.5 billion per year to $27.3 billion.
  
  Bush, like most presidents, decries this wasteful spending. But unlike others, he refuses to use his veto pen to stop it. He is the first president since James Garfield, elected in 1880, not to have vetoed anything. But Garfield at least had the excuse of being assassinated shortly into his presidency. John Quincy Adams (1824-1828) is the last president to serve a full four-year term without a veto. And one must go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson (1800-1808), our third president, to find one who served in office as long as Bush without vetoing a single bill.
  
  Bush's greatest sin, in my book, was ramming the Medicare drug benefit through Congress by covering up its true cost and strong-arming principled conservatives into voting for it. According to the Medicare trustees' latest report, the program has an unfunded liability of $18 trillion in current value terms. That means we would need that much in a mutual fund today, earning a return, to pay its unfunded liability.
  
  Although there was a case for allowing Medicare to pay for prescription drugs, the rest of Medicare has an unfunded liability of $50 trillion. Bush's action, therefore, pushed it up to $68 trillion in total. By contrast, the unfunded liability of Social Security, which he told us time and again last year was in dire financial straights, has an unfunded liability of just $11 trillion.
  
  I and a growing number of other budget analysts now think the only way of avoiding a financial Katrina when the baby boom generation starts to retire is a massive tax increase. Future presidents may be the ones to enact it. But Bush's policies will have caused it.

Spanky, what kind of retarded analysts are you Republicans using these days? Doesn't this moron understand that everything will be just peachy as we grow our way out of this problem?

Gattigap

The Conservative Crackup over Bush
 

Only one person so far - a lone letter to the editor published in this morning's NYTimes - outed this "conservative backlash" for what it is - a transparant attempt by the right to position itself as moderate.

These angry conservatives aren't mad at Bush. They're using him as a foil to portray themselves as moderate. bush has become the conservative ogre against which people juxtapose their commitment to compassionate conservativism. He's come full circle - he's the "boss" he ran against in 2000. Its pure comedy to watch this unfold. I'm curious as to how Frist will pronouncce himself a moderate. Looks like it will be McCain's nomination to lose. But he'd better pick a damn good VP. I could see Hillary making the argument that McCain is too old and too entrenched in the GOP to clean up the mess left by Bush. He needs a real VP to show people that a moderate GOP admin will be around for a long time.

I think McCain can win this thing. People are very scared of what a person like Hillary would do in office. She's a mean Jimmy Carter with tits. I don't think we can suffer another Bush, but I shudder at the thought of Hillary in the White House. A repeal of tax cuts now - which would translate to a tax hike in the minds of consumers - would doom this economy. Any talk of universal health care will do the same. She's too strident and insane for these times.

If you beat a perp to death, why wouldn't murder charges suffice?

There's no real point to cutting off a finger. Why does that benefit anyone? If you allow for damages, including punitives for repeat offenses by a departmen, isn't that enough deterrence? Cops will end up on desk duty pretty quickly if they start exhausting the budget. Raises this year? Sorry, Billy's been busting down too many doors without warrants. Yeah, he'll be popular on the force.

The pain doesn't trickle down that way.

Next time you go to one of your Republican love-fests, try making this argument.

But, substitute "gun control" for "exclusionary rule," and adjust the rest accordingly. See how it goes.

Relying on TV shows and movies* should disqualify you on this Board faster than comparing someone to Hitler.


*known to scholars as "fiction." Go figure.

Probably (1), if you would make the system viable. I am waiting for someone opposed to the Exclusionary Rule to propose eliminating sovereign immunity and offering punitive damages for police violation of the fourth and fifth amendments.

Second sign of the apocalypse?


http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...077#post240077

The Conservative Crackup over Bush
 

Paul Krugman (who, for a host of reasons ranging from obvious to outable, I generally cannot stand) had an interesting column on this the other day. Basically, he quoted some of the attacks some of these same conservatives made on him several years ago, for saying the exact same things that these people have now figured out.

It was smug and self-satisfied, but still kinda funny. (Like Bilmore, but in the mirror).

I would do both if you're offering damages in lieu of the exclusionary rule. It wouldn't be an adequate substitute otherwise (I thought that was assumed from our long-ago discussion on the issue).

On punis, you'd have to have some sort of limits on it--heightened showing, pattern and practice, etc. But, yeah.

If you care to search (and I'm sure you don't any more than I do), I proposed this not-novel idea the last time Spanky raised the issue. That is, if a municipal government or state were to adopt a rule that waived sovereign immunity and allowed damages suits (against the police department or the individual cop, who would undoubtedly be indemnified anyway) for illegal searches and seizures, I believe it could then argue in court that evidence illegally seized should not be excluded under the fourth amendment.

Of course, no one will adopt that scheme because it will monetize and make transparent the costs of shoddy police work.

Free Scooter
 

From Drudge:

• THE WASHINGTON POST's famous Watergate editor Ben Bradlee claims that it was former State Department Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage who was the individual who leaked the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame.
  
  In the latest issue of VANITY FAIR: "Woodward was in a tricky position. People close to him believe that he had learned about Plame from his friend Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's former deputy, who has been known to be critical of the administration and who has a blunt way of speaking. 'That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption,' former WASHINGTON POST editor Ben Bradlee said."
  
  'I had heard about an e-mail that was sent that had a lot of unprintable language in it.'"

The Exclusionary Rule survives for the same reason that (e.g.) rent control does -- achieving the same policy goals through better means would involve spending money, which politicians would rather not do, so better to let society absorb the costs through something other than taxes.