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checkpoint charlie
Posted on Fri, Sep 03 2004 As if we need more examples of our civil liberties being trampled, there's a lovely article in the local paper about a checkpoint this weekend in Toledo along I-75 at the Michigan border. A sobriety checkpoint, you ask? Why no, they're not looking for drunks, they're looking for... firewood. There's an area in Michigan that's quarantined due to the emerald ash borer, which has been killing ash trees.
Don't get me wrong - I care deeply about the problem at hand, and I think that we should everything we can in the bounds of the law to stop it. I think that the Toledo Police Department could use a refresher on the Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. To be pulled over and searched without your consent, and without probable cause, is completely illegal. It is not okay to give up our civil liberties in the name of security, whether from terrorists or insect larvae.
... They're looking for... firewood...? *blink* In cars? Random cars? Along a big busy interstate? Sans permission?
Wow. America is weird. (Still love America, but, wow, that's rather silly) we have checkpoints along the I-5 and 15 at the northern end of the county, ostensibly to check for illegal immigrants (organic and non) - though people I know have been stopped despite claiming (truthfully) that they hadn't been to Mexico in months or years. Fun stuff, and amazing how willing the majority of us are to stay merrily complicit with the types of things that we were told as children happened only in those big bad communist countries.
Quarantine environments are special. Searching cars for firewood (or diseased people :) does _not_ constitute "unreasonable search", and there is case law to support that.
If they search your car for firewood and find other contraband, they can't charge you, because that _would_ be unreasonable search... Just because there is case law to support it doesn't mean that it isn't taking a crap on the Constitution.
And quarantines should be only applied to extraordinary circumstances. There's always some threat somewhere. Just because peaches might get moldy in Georgia doesn't give the government a right to build a wall around the state and require body cavity searches to pass it. Josh Woodward - http://www.JoshWoodward.com/
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