Liberty MavenMost Americans Live In the “Constitution-Free” Zone
November 2nd, 2008 8:02 pm | by Mike Miller | Published in Big Government, Civil Liberties, congress, Constitution, Individual Responsibility, liberator online, Liberty, Politics | 1
From The Advocates for Self-Government’s Liberator Online, James W. Harris brings up the ACLU’s coined term “Constitution Free Zone” and the fact that more than two-thirds of Americans live along the coastlines, where border searches and seizures are commonplace:
Are you living in the “Constitution-Free Zone?”
Probably so.
“Constitution-Free Zone” is a term the ACLU has created to dramatize yet another massive new federal assault on your Bill of Rights freedoms.
Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.
The border, however, has always been an exception to this. The Supreme Court has long upheld the government’s right to conduct a “routine search” of people entering and exiting the country, without a warrant or probable cause. This is known as the “border search exception” of the Fourth Amendment.
But what is “the border”? Ah, there’s the problem.
You’re probably thinking it’s a small strip of land where the U.S. coast meets the ocean, or where U.S. territory bumps up against Mexico or Canada.
Wrong.
The federal government defines the “border” as a 100-mile wide strip that circles the United States.
Nearly two-thirds of the entire U.S. population — almost 200 million people — live within this strip.
Indeed whole states fall within this area: Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. As do nine of the ten largest metropolitan areas in America.
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November 3rd, 2008 at 1:51 am (#)
Yeah, but I’m sure they won’t actually start stopping people at random and asking them for their papers. After all, we don’t live in a police state, right? And the administration assured us that they’d only use their powers to go after bona-fide, suspected terrorists, right? [insert deep, evil laugh here]
I seem to recall Bob Barr also saying something to that effect, in regret. Something like: they assured us they’d only use these powers narrowly, to investigate suspected terrorists. But I guess we’re all suspected terrorists now.
Sorry about the negativity, Mike. I’m not as much a cynic as I sometimes appear. But I read the ACLU’s press release when it first came out, and then when the Advocates reiterated it, and now on your blog. Unfortunately, it just goes to prove that indeed, a police force powerful enough to allay all our fears is destined to become our most distressing terror.
-TimK