Red White and Steamed
Or
Bush League Justice

"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." --Thomas Jefferson Please, someone wake me up. It's time for me to get out of bed and be 6 years old again. Pinch me and show that this entire world is one bad, bad dream. It's getting to the point where I can't drink for the sheer enjoyment of it anymore, because I'm too busy drinking to forget this terrible place. And that, my friends, is when we know we have problems. I have recently re-discovered the pleasures of reading a daily newspaper. As the movies once told us, "Ignorance of your culture is not considered cool". It started as a means for me to get my hands on a crossword puzzle every day, in the hopes that doing that daily brain stimulus would offset the act of killing off cells from the same brain later in the day with beer and whiskey. Soon it blossomed into reading it cover to cover every day. Now I think it's time to stop altogether and get back to just drowning that damn notion of keeping abreast. When reading about new cars possibly being outfitted with transponders, I said, "That could be handy sometimes... kinda weird, though." Cell phones with GPS chips in them, "Eh... I don't have one... won't affect me." The high-tech security cameras at the Super Bowl, virtually identifying every spectator? "Well, it is the most widely-threatened event of the year." And so on. But now these same cameras may be more widely used in our malls, our towns, atop our stoplights. I am not a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but that sounds a little excessive. Talk even abounds in regards to actually using high-tech retinal scans, as seen in the movies, another way of securing and verifying our country. Now, I'm patriotic. I wouldn't care to live anywhere else. I shout "USA, USA" whenever I feel proud to live in this country, or at the bar, or whatever. We have a pretty good deal here. But we are founded on freedom. And lately, or even further-spanning than lately, it seems that inch by inch some freedoms are being co-opted in the name of safety and security, "for our own good". Well screw that. I don't want "my own good". If I want someone making all my decisions for me, keeping me out of trouble, I'll get married. I think Charleton Heston said it best when he said "Get your stinking paws offa me, you damn dirty ape!" In this case, the US Government, from the top down, is that ape. You see, there is a Supreme Court debate going on (right now!) over how the police can use technologically advanced equipment to fight crime. At the head of the argument is thermal imaging, like in the movie Eraser. Basically, in layman's terms (and a little over-simplified, I admit), the cop points the thing at the wall of your house. Anything casting heat shows up in different colors, resembling the shape of the heat-emitting object. It won't outline your bed, for instance, but they will get an eyeful of you and your girlfriend "lying" on the bed. (But if someone pees on your bed, the residual heat will rest on the bed, making it easy for the surveillor to picture the presence of a bed, table, ironing board or rack underneath.) This works in different ways. In the case at trial now, Danny Kyello of Oregon was arrested after police used the thermal scanner to observe his home. Now listen carefully: Because of the level of heat coming off of one of his walls and his roof, police obtained a search warrant and entered his home, where they found Kyello growing marijuana. This is not a drug debate; I don't care what he was growing. Based on the thermal information, without observing Kyello's behavior, seeing any deals, hearing any conversations at all, they arrested him. Kyello's attorney argued the case claiming Fourth Amendment rights violations, and the fact that it has gotten all the way to the Supreme Court shows that apparently we as a country are not as smart as we were 200 years ago. For you Philistines, the Fourth Amendment "protects" us from unreasonable search and seizure. (Sidebar: reason can mean either: the capacity for rational thinking, OR the cause or motive for an action, decision or conviction. Apparently the Constitution wasn't worded clearly enough. I can hear them now: "It wasn't an unreasonable search because we had a reason to think he was guilty." I oughta buy stock in Advil.) In rebuttal, a Justice Department attorney went on to say that the thermal scanner does not penetrate the walls of a structure, and, beautifully, that "people don't expect to keep private whatever heat escapes from their homes... the question is whether individuals have a justifiable expectation of privacy in the heat that's on the exterior of their wall. We believe they do not. Heat loss is inevitable." If you're not at this time a little uneasy with that thought, read that last paragraph again. If still nothing, have someone else read it to you and explain it. If still nothing after that, either read 1984 or join the SS, depending on where your loyalties lay. The poor bastard's attorney also added, regarding our current level of technology, "people have no way of knowing when they are voluntarily exposing something." This came after the US Court of Appeals ruled Kyello never made an attempt to conceal his home's heat emissions. I promise I am not making this up. To change topics briefly, in order not to throw up all over myself in anger and disgust, let's talk about something else. Let's see here... Aha. It seems the Supreme Court, that bastion of American Justice, has ruled 8-1 in favor of police being allowed to prevent people from entering their homes while they, the police, seek a warrant to search. Again, let's walk through this so we don't lose anyone: You come home from the bar. There are police outside your house. You have drugs, illegal immigrants and snuff films that you need to get out of the bedroom. Lucky for you, the police do not have a search warrant, so you chuckle and take your keys out, wondering if you have to burn your stash or if you can hide it in your girlfriend's underwear drawer. But then, an officer stops you, saying you can't go into your own home because they do not yet have a search warrant. You can't enter you own home because they don't have a warrant. That sounds suspiciously like a) good policy b) sour grapes because you gave them the old "nana boo boo" c) Fourth Amendment violations against unreasonable seizure d) Sexually frustrated right wing jackassery. I won't give you the answer(s). Go with your gut. Now, I could be mistaken. Maybe most of you like that thought and I'm just a crusty old crank. Maybe the thought of that ruling will keep you warm at night. Personally, I have nothing to hide and nothing to fear from a search warrant. But if they take away the rights of the guys growing Panama Red in their attics, they take away my rights as well. Those kinds of thoughts make a shack in Montana sound mighty appealing sometimes. I'm very unhappy, and I want my local and state representatives to know it. Anyone else who is concerned with this bold new America in the Bush years, please do the same. Next time, what to do with St. Patrick's Day dyed beer: will it really hurt your body, or just make your output cool shades of green?   Other Articles by Justin: "Noodle Soup" Or "How to deal with the random one-night hook-up." "Give a Brother a Right of Way" Or "Yield Your Beer" "A Sobering Time of Year" Or "Single for St. Paddy's Day" "A Giant-Sized Thirst" Or "Ravin' About Football" "Hairy Psalms" Or "I Think I Bent My Wookie"   Justin would like to hear your questions about drinking etiquette. Feel free to email him at vitamin.j@drunks.com. Your question maybe answered in Justin's next article.