Wow, unreal that she could approve such a warrant. Even in the absence of a federal statute it seems like a crazy step to take.
Federal >> state >> local
It seems plausible that the paper might report on things that relate to or impact neighboring states.
But like I said - even if the statute weren't there - what's wrong with calling them up and asking them to surrender whatever they're searching for under subpoena instead? Especially for the purported crime of "identity theft"?!
And last clause says Congress has three power to enforce this
And sadly this perhaps qualifies as "due process" in Marion County.
I'm not sure what isn't interstate commerce maybe your kids lemonade stand as long as it's more than 100 miles from the state line?
> A confidential source contacted the newspaper, [with] evidence that Newell had been convicted of drunken driving and continued to [drive without a] license. [That] could jeopardize her efforts to obtain a liquor license[…].
> [The claim was confirmed but the paper] suspected the source was […] Newell’s husband, who had filed for divorce. [The reporter didn’t publish that and] alerted police to the situation.
> Police notified Newell, who then complained […] that the newspaper had illegally obtained and disseminated sensitive documents, which isn’t true.
Wow. No kidding it’s a small town. Restaurant owner acts poorly, pissed off future ex(?) leaks damaging info to the paper, she runs to the cops to say the paper did something illegal despite not publishing it, and the entire department raided the little paper?
Yeesh.
https://www.sccourts.org/summaryCourtBenchBook/HTML/GeneralB....
Melissa Underwood, communications director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, replied by email to a question about whether the KBI was involved in the case.
“At the request of the Marion Police Department, on Tuesday, Aug. 8, we began an investigation into allegations of criminal wrongdoing in Marion, Kansas. The investigation is ongoing,” Underwood said.What law is that? I'm not familiar with such a law but can't imagine it would even be constitutional. Eg the law Jack Smith indicted trump with recently is about protecting federal/conditional rights.
Yes, the commerce clause is quite expansive and is interpreted expansively, but at the least this would be a first amendment issue and Congress can enforce that and does
That citation and the quoted bit limiting the law to interstate commerce is already in the first comment you replied to. I think you have misconstrued something.
E.g. Wickard v. Filburn, held that a farmer harvesting a small quantity of his own wheat and eating it affected interstate commerce, because the farmer did not consume other wheat available in interstate commerce.
Just about anything commercial affects interstate commerce by this definition.
The law we're all talking about prohibits a government employee from searching or seizing any product materials intended for use in production of communication materials that affect interstate commerce.
The 4th amendment isn’t worth anything if judges will sign off on everything that crosses their desk.
Your comment brought back memories of growing up in India.
The idea of a "Panchayat" was taught in schools as both an ancient form of local/self governance and a modern answer to effective governance in post partition India. Even Gandhi promoted it as a pillar of India's self-rule.
Basically, village "elders" land up passing judgement on disputes. Most of these people were "respected" but uneducated. Their world views were very narrow.
As can be expected, it wasn't uncommon for their biases to result in "justice" that would be totally unacceptable when viewed through a broader lens.
After decades in the US, to discover that something like this can happen in 21st century USA is really unsettling. I'm having trouble explaining (even to myself) the anguish I feel.
0 - this is as close to absolute immunity as exists in the law. In fact, you could, with a straight face and clean conscience call it absolute immunity.
1 - no, seriously. They can, for instance order an underage girl to be sterilized in an ex-parte hearing and face no consequences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump_v._Sparkman
> From 1979 through 2012, the court overseeing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has rejected only 11 of the more than 33,900 surveillance applications by the government
> "The FISA system is broken. At the point that a FISA judge can compel the disclosure of millions of phone records of U.S. citizens engaged in only domestic communications, unrelated to the collection of foreign intelligence…there is no longer meaningful judicial review," Mr. Rotenberg said.
Story by the Wall Street Journal https://archive.ph/lafXz
When I tried to get records showing how often search warrants happen and what their details are, they give inconsistent amounts of records for identical time windows. First FOIA request gave 9k records, second was 11k, third was 18k. And colleagues were able to find more with requests for emails.
When I appealed to the IL AG office, they sided with CPD saying that a sufficient search was done, despite our proof showing that a marginally expanded search resulted in more records.
All made worse by the Judicial branch being un-FOIAable.
It's all pretty fucked.
If there was a statistically relevant problem, we wouldn’t hear about this sort of malfeasance in the news.
The fact that there is almost always one or another incident making the news only indicates that rare events occur frequently at sufficiently large scale.
The overwhelming majority of search and arrest warrants are authorised because they should be, and, well, like any job role, mistakes shouldn’t be dealt with by disciplinary action that results in the work being ground to a halt.
Where serious wrong doing occurs we should expect disciplinary action, and we do see that occasionally as it makes the news.
There’s definitely an argument to be made that maybe some police are too prone to abuse their powers, but the answer isn’t perfect law enforcement, the answer is how much malfeasance and corruption is tolerable, because we’ll never have none, and the only thing worse than corruption is perfect law enforcement.
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978), is the leading United States Supreme Court decision on judicial immunity. It involved an Indiana judge who was sued by a young woman who had been sterilized without her knowledge as a minor in accordance with the judge's order. The Supreme Court held that the judge was immune from being sued for issuing the order because it was issued as a judicial function. The case has been called one of the most controversial in recent Supreme Court history.
The most controversial case in recent Supreme Court history being from 45 years ago speaks directly to how rare this level of controversy is.
You don’t really want the bar to entry for the roll of magistrate to be too high.
The page you linked states a magistrate must be at least 21, have a Batchelor’s degree, undergo a training program within one year of commencing the roll, with restrictions on their abilities until that and other milestones are met.
This points to the idea that any reasonable adult, with a proven ability to pass at least a baccalaureate, ought be able to administer the law to at least a level of basic competency while they simultaneously commit to the career path by undergoing relevant training.
Magistrates who are licensed attorneys have fewer restrictions and can progress faster.
Is there some other set of rules you would prefer?
Should the average higher-education-qualify adult be prevented from participating in the judiciary?
That doesn’t seem like an argument a citizen of a democracy wound intentionally make.
Maybe you should be more riled up.
The point is it happened and there were no consequences or accountability for the judge involved.
If you think more minor “controversies” don’t happen every single day, enabled by this sort or legal reasoning, I cannot help you.
They are rubber stamping warrant requests without any consideration of the Constitution, how is what I'm proposing anti-democratic?
This might be a bit spicy, but I don't think that a bachelors degree should count as higher education anymore. So, no, the average higher-education-qualify adult shouldn't be prevented from participating in the judiciary, but I think the bar for 'higher-education-qualify' should at least be a post-bachelors degree specific to the field.
The judiciary and law enforcement absolutely must be held to a higher standard which does not accept mistakes. They are not 'any job role' -- these people have the authority to take away your livelihood, if not your life. The standard they must be held to should be perfection and nothing less. Any deviation from such should be treated as harshly as the worst criminals are.
> Where serious wrong doing occurs we should expect disciplinary action
_Any_ wrongdoing by law enforcement is serious.
> the answer is how much malfeasance and corruption is tolerable, because we’ll never have none
Just because we won't ever end up at 'none' doesn't mean we need to be accepting of anything less. Zero malfeasance, zero corruption. Anything but those should be burned out as a cancer, even if that burning out needs to be literal.