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Supreme Court rules that anyone arrested may be subject to a strip search
So yeah. There are a lot of reasons this is a terrible terrible idea, and probably counts as unconstitutional as well, but there you have it.
Comments
As if the U.S. justice system wasn't backwards enough.
And yet they still want to do it. Gotta love the US.
Are you fucking shitting me? Strip searches wouldn't have helped then either, but they trot those out as an example... Jesus, why did people feel the need to pass this bill when common sense shows it will be a waste of time and demeaning to prisoners all the time?
Yes. If I were less attacked to my laptop I would be punching a hole through the monitor right now in rage.
Although, it would be amusing if one of the Supreme Justices who voted for this got a speeding ticket and ended up getting strip searched, protesting that it was bullshit the whole way.
George W. Bush appointed two of these guys. Is it any wonder the Supreme Court is completely fascist?
We might as well just have the Supreme Court declare martial law. They're not democratically elected, they keep their positions for life, and the other two branches of government can do jack shit to oppose them.
This is legitimately an excellent slip of the tongue. Keyboard. Whatever.
Yes. Because strip searching a guy for a minor traffic violation is likely to find terrorist plots. Maybe he had the minutes from the last meeting tattooed on his dick, I dunno.
Fuck it, our law enforcement just really, really wants to look at dicks.
Yes. Because seven of them weren't. And I'd like to remind you that Obama has been selling us out at pretty much every opportunity when it comes to Orwellian policies too, as has most of Congress.
^What.
As horrible as it sounds, I'm beginning to see little other way this trend can resolve, and it scares the hell out of me. These policies have typically been overwhelmingly bipartisan in recent years, and often outright ignore (or in recent months suppress) public outrage. What do you do when the extent of your power is to vote for candidates who are all in on it? I mean, look at this!
(I find it so, so heartening that Merkeley and Wyden were among the nays there. I have never loved this state so much, and as many issues as I have with some of those two's other policies I want to give them a huge hug.)
That's not a rhetorical question. Someone prove me wrong, please. A revolt would suck indescribably miserably for all sides (calling it "interesting" is...really, really disturbing), fail very quickly, result in immediate martial law, smash our infrastructure to hell, destabilize the fuck out of global markets, and cause horrible stuff to happen worldwide. Nobody can afford that to happen. Period.
Like, Europe embargo the crap out of us or something until we smarten up, or a sudden rash of third-party elections to break the iron grip. We need a peaceful way out of this.
"Like, Europe embargo the crap out of us or something until we smarten up"
Alas, that too would destabilize global markets.
"or a sudden rash of third-party elections to break the iron grip."
Come on. You guys can do it. We've just nearly done it up here.
As some who lives in America and isn't too happy with how the government has been acting lately, I really, really would rather not have that happen.
Also, I don't think "interesting" is the right word. Unless I've completely misjudged you this whole time.
America's government can improve. It'll just take time. People need to get out and vote more.
Are you saying that the people who stay home do so because they hate the two main parties?
Well, if that's the case, I agree with you. Though I'm not sure if "voting more" is the answer, especially with the failure of a system that is first past the post.
At least on the local level, in my town we've always had a huge problem with getting people out to vote. Things like the school system's budget getting cut happen every year, even though there's so many people with kids in our town.
I'm pretty sure a similar thing happens on a national level. The politicians aren't as representative of the people as they should be, because people either don't vote, don't pay attention to what they're voting for outside the president.
It might not make America a utopia, but it would be a big step forward, I think. I doubt we'd get things that upset so many people if we actually payed attention.
And if people payed attention, running as something other than Republican or Democrat might be a legitimate thing.
Yeah, for serious.
How much turnout do third parties get over there? Down here the next highest party tops out at a whopping 0.5% votes and one representative out of over 5,000 in state lower houses, and is also mildly insane.
Agreed, first step is to fight voter apathy. The second is to inform voters that a lot of candidates, especially Republicans, are NOT looking out for your interests. Third, is to crush lobbying. The real question is how to do all this.
I have to say though, the fact that outright civil war is even on the table for you guys is intensely disturbing.
EDIT: fuck, hit save before I was done
It's not just voter apathy. A large part of the problem is that third parties are viewed as nothing more than strategic leeches to sap votes from the #2. One of the reasons our current main parties are so batshit nuts is because they try to either pounce on all these fringes, or distance themselves from them as much as possible hoping the other main party will get associated with them. The fringes in turn get more insane than both parties to try and survive as distinct.
Unhappiness with the government, sure, but that's not the same thing as gearing up to grab guns and march on Washington.
Either way, bloody revolt would do nothing but make a bad situation into Hell.
^ It's not the sole problem, but it's the first step to improvement.
I could imagine that South Carolina might threaten to secede if Obama is re-elected but that's about it as far as civil war goes. Conservatives don't exactly want something that horrible to happen, either, and any civil uprising would quickly be crushed by the military. I could, however, imagine something akin to a Tea Party-flavored Weather Underground.
@Forzare: The fact that people are even suggesting it as a serious solution (both here and in meatspace) means it's far more on than I'd like.
It wouldn't be a solution. Even if someone is desperate enough to want to try, there's absolutely no possibility it could actually solve anything because modern military is so many orders of magnitude beyond anything a militia could ever muster. And once the uprising is crushed, they'd use it as an excuse to clamp down harder. Look how long we've been hanging on to OMG terrorism as a smokescreen for this stuff despite the fact that domestic terrorism is statistically a lesser threat than your own bathtub -- what do you think would happen if we actually had large-scale violence on our home turf?
The only people who are seriously suggesting it are the nutjobs.
So 'interesting' in a, "How would this change the world?" sort of way
Obviously it would be horrifying and I hope my limited understanding of states politics is wrong (they have a multi party system instead of a two party system? I vaguely remember hearing about that but due to how the states are, it slipped my mind) and it can be resolved peacefully still
I can't see a civil war in America in this day and age having anything but a negative effect on the entire world, and with current military tech... It's not gonna happen.
The US has a multiparty system, but the only parties that anyone pays attention to/votes for are the Republicans and the Democrats.
Just in terms of technology level, a revolution in te US is pretty much impossible.
Ninja'd.
@Bee:
We just had a third party overtake the historically most popular party for Opposition, not that it means much since the Conservatives currently have a majority. Which they won about as legitimately as George W. Bush did the presidency in 2000, but I digress.
However this is a party that has been around for decades as the perpetual third-most-popular party, so the first step as far as the US would be concerned would be to elect third-party candidates to a few seats in the House.
But I mean, we basically just have a three-party system rather than a two-party system; none of the other parties are very popular. (The Green Party also won a single seat in the 2011 election though, so I guess that's something.)
Don't forget that the NDP has often wielded the balance of power in minority governments, since they were the difference between a majority vote on a bill and the bill not passing.
As I understand it there's less of an expectation in the US that congresspeople must vote along party lines on everything ever, so that position wouldn't be as meaningful there.