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I only wish people were as fervent about the 2nd Amendment as they are about the 1st and 4th. People seem to not care about giving the rights they choose not to exercise.
On this particular subject, I think that from a legal standpoint, it's pretty much still up in the air. I don't know enough about law (much less Constitutional law) to give any kind of educated opinion. On the surface, it certainly does look pretty bad. I'm sure this will be settled eventually, though. Especially if we elect a Democrat in November. A lot of people have a stake in making Bush's legacy as negative as possible.
Without the 4th, they could find out if you had guns. With the 4th, they have no right to search your property for guns...
Its been a while since I looked over the patriot act in detail, but I think it isn't just a random "for any suspect" sort of issue.
If you read through the patriot act, I think it first requires a judges approval via a process of being able to show to that judge that these individuals are reasonably associated with a possible terrorist action, organization, etc...
At that point, I believe any searches or the like committed within the boundaries of that initial authorization is allowed.
Sure, this is a touchy area, but as I said, if I remember correctly, it isn't them simply being able to do whatever they want to anyone they want, anytime they want. There is a process of validation, it is just that once the judge accepts that this person or group warrants the probable cause, extra warrant steps and procedures are negated to allow for expediency due to the types of cases these are.
So basically, if you are a terroist, or they can reasonably provide a judge with evidence that supports that you are, then they can tap your phones, pull information from local agencies, etc... without having to go through the process every single time they need to gain information from a different area which also required a separate warrant each time.
If you know anything about warrants, they can often cause time troubles which causes the investigating agency to miss an opportunity to catch the suspect.
I have an honest question and I think it is quite relevant to this discussion since it is the exact thing we are discussing.
How many people here have read all of the patriot act? Not someones summary, not a small part from a website, but actually read the original document (it is online and freely available)?
How many? Raise your hand.
/raises hand
If you haven't, I strongly suggest you do. If you are commenting one way or another about this document without having actually read it. Well, I am sorry, but you would have to be a fool.
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