what gives?

[acroyear]

Can't win for losing.

Conservatives enact and promote policies that remove your liberty (detentions, free speech zones, no habeas corpus, torture jails throughout the world, policies that promote religions), while Liberals enact and promote policies that remove your property (eminent domain, asset forfeiture, and several forms of wealth redistribution (necessary though that is at times)).

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: More Asset Forfeiture Madness:

This is the problem with asset forfeiture laws, they flip the presumption of innocence upside down. The laws were ostensibly for the purpose of preventing criminals from profiting from their crimes, allowing the government to seize cash, jewels, homes and vehicles that were bought with drug money or used in the commission of a crime. But if you can seize cash or property without ever even charging the person with any crime, much less convicting them of it, the 4th amendment is pretty much turned into confetti.

This is accompanied by excerpts from an article describing several such incidents of theft by police, with this little tidbit thrown in:

Dorman's attorney, David Guillory, calls the roadside stops and seizures in Tenaha "highway piracy," undertaken by a couple of law enforcement officers whose agencies get to keep most of what was seized.

Guillory is suing officials in Tenaha and Shelby County on behalf of Dorman and nine other clients whose property was confiscated. All were African-Americans driving either rentals or vehicles with out-of-state plates.

Guillory alleges in the lawsuit that while his clients were detained, they were presented with an ultimatum: waive your rights to your property in exchange for a promise to be released and not be criminally charged.

At the national level, the laws that give the DEA exactly the same "freedom" to take your stuff effectively without charging you for a crime were submitted by Vice President Joe Biden.  They've been used extensively throughout California and Oregon, where medical marijuana has been legal for quite some time.

Remember, Jefferson's original words were Life, Liberty, and Property, not "Pursuit of Happiness". Jefferson's only 1 for 3 in what his country has become in the last 15 years.

Of course, there are several cases where BOTH sides are screwing up and taking the same (wrong) side, with various forms of censorship and control of the media (especially the creation of a new form of political correctness where criticizing religions is rendered unethical and illegal - the right love it because it protects their particular madnesses from criticism while the left love it because it shows "tolerance" and "respect"), and in their collective giveaways that allow the media empires to circumvent the public's side of intellectual property rights and the loss of the public domain.

Comments

[bronxelf-ag001.livejournal.com]

Conservatives enact and promote policies that remove your liberty (detentions, free speech zones, no habeas corpus, torture jails throughout the world, policies that promote religions), while Liberals enact and promote policies that remove your property (eminent domain, asset forfeiture, and several forms of wealth redistribution (necessary though that is at times)).

Or, as I put it: Your money or your life.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

well, "life" was what I was trying to say they were at least paying lip service to holding on to: they generally won't kill you outright, thus with life separate from liberty, Jefferson's at 1 for 3.

but I get the drift. :)

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

...they generally won't kill you outright

Unless your heart has a congenital allergy to tasers.

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

Actually conservatives will use eminent domain to put in shopping malls.

Heck, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that a 'tasteful chapel' like the one near me would qualify as 'public good' for eminent domain purposes ... esp. if a less than appealing to their base group was already there (nudist colony, free range farm, etc.).