Just Say No to Illegal Police Searches!

The Constitutional "Precedent" Set by the Patriot Act Appears to Be Serving to Accelerate the Rapid Disintegration of Civil Liberties in This Country 

With the stroke of an autopen, the once articulate critic of the Patriot Act signed a four year extension of the most dangerous assault on American civil liberties in US history without a single additional privacy protection. 

One would think that this reauthorization would have incited vigorous debate in the halls of Congress and at least a fraction of the breathless 24/7 media coverage allotted the Anthony Weiner "sexting" scandal.  Instead, three weeks ago the House ( 250 to 153 ) and Senate ( 72 to 23 ) approved, and the President signed, an extension of this landmark attack on the Bill of Rights with little notice and even less debate. 

Most disturbing was the extension - without modification - of the Act's three most controversial provisions: 

The Orange County Register

The next time police knock at your door, be careful what you do next. Any sound you make inside could grant police the authority to search your home without a warrant.

That's the result of last week's misguided Supreme Court decision expanding the definition of an exigent circumstance under which police can conduct a warrantless search. In an 8-1 ruling, the court created a new precedent that grants law enforcement the power to bypass a warrant based on arbitrary standards, which could be as minimal as “hearing” evidence being destroyed. We strongly disagree with the court because, in the words of dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it “arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement.”