photo by Terrance McCormack 

Are we losing the very freedoms the Tea-party folks claim they want?

Findlaw article on the 4th amendment to the Constitution: http://goo.gl/7mWLe

Findlaw article on the 5th amendment to the Constitution amend http://goo.gl/DSfBt 

"nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"

These days the fourth and fifth amendments to the Constitution are just barely hanging on. The pertinent language of the fifth is above and the pertinent language of the fourth is "probable cause."
Where is the probable cause when African American youth are stopped on the street and frisked? How many people sit in jail for weeks or months awaiting trial and end up losing life, liberty or property as result?

The federal government is now frisking all of us on a daily basis without any real probable cause. How do I know that? Because if they had probable cause they'd be getting a warrant to search for the purpose of prosecuting the person being electronically or postaly frisked.

Their (government operatives') interest appears to not be attempting to arrest wrong doers but rather to get as much information as possible in order to what? Data-mine it? Store it against some potential future need?

Whatever their reason, the government bureaucrats with the assistance of elected officials routinely ignore fourth and fifth amendment rights. I'm sure in so doing that they've prevented crimes. Possibly crimes that would be at the very least, shocking. The problem is that they're trading security for freedom.

Open societies by their nature are subject to attack by unscrupulous individuals and organizations. There is a fine balance, though, between protecting people and causing those same people to lose the protections set up to guard individuals from the tyranny of the majority.

I just thought I'd point this increasingly scary fact out to people who might care.