good grief...

[acroyear]

The Legalized Theft of Asset Forfeiture : Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Just read it. Sheer madness. And Biden helped create these laws.

Comments

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

Um, not just Biden (although I fail to see how he's relevant to this outside of the fact that he's veep right now). Asset forefeiture laws came about during the late 1980s as part of George H.W. Bush's escalation of the "War On Drugs" (a term I despise) due to the crack use epidemic (which was yet another neat way to hit black folks harder on drug use, since crack, as opposed to powder, was cheaper and more easily available in minority communities).

Democrats voted for the drastic new asset forfeiture laws in order to not get painted as "soft on drugs" by the right, which has been mau-mauing the left for years on law enforcement issues. Hence it was a bipartisan unconstitutional mugging.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Mentioning Biden was more pointing out that this particular part of the "totalitarian state" assault on the Bill of Rights is not exclusive to Republicans.

I suppose it is less necessary to point that out these days as a year into this administration, the legal claims by the DoJ on their privilege to revoke habeas corpus and lock people up forever are worse now than even Bush's people tried to get away with.

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

Power, once given away, is always more difficult to wrest back—no matter who is running the government.