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pisshead
11-30-2005, 02:18 AM
ACLU Apologist for the Police State

http://hammeroftruth.com/images/articles/homelandsecurity.jpg

This one (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/11/28/miami_police_take_new_tack_against_terror/?rss_id=Boston.com+/+News) is pretty damned scary:



Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant.


Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats.


There goes the Fourth Amendment (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/) and what particles remain of the Fifth (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment05/).




??People are definitely going to notice it,? Fernandez said. ??We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don??t want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears.?



Geez, like we need more shock and awe (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/) these days. What??s the plan, to intimidate honest citizens into being snitches (http://www.alternet.org/rights/13620/) for the jackbooted thugs. It is comforting to know that they ??don??t want people to feel their rights are being threatened? ?? except for that quirky little 4th Amendment thing.




Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida, said the Miami initiative appears aimed at ensuring that people??s rights are not violated.


??What we??re dealing with is officers on street patrol, which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,? Simon said. ??We??ll have to see how it is implemented.?


I??ve been actively (http://markbodenhausen.com/node/108) supportive (http://www.lp.org/yourturn/archives/000058.shtml) of the ACLU on this general issue, as they have been leading the way with respect to fighting the Patriot Act and related infringements of our civil rights. This time, I??ve got to hold their feet to the fire. The admission that the Miami Model (http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=488) is ??more consistent with the Constitution? logically means that it is not consistent with the Constitution.


While I??m not at all surprised by another usurpation of our rights as American citizens, I am deeply upset (assuming the quotation above is correct) that an ACLU spokesperson has become an apologist for the police state.

Update by Stephen VanDyke: Radley Balko weighs in (http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025923.php#025923), saying ??If the terrorists hate us for our freedom, then holy shit are we ever appeasing the terrorists.?

Another update by Stephen VanDyke: A modified version of the story in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/29/AR2005112900172.html) quotes police spokesman Angel Calzadilla as saying ??there would be no random checks of identification.? Did the stink on the blogosphere drive them to drop the idea?
pisshead
11-30-2005, 02:20 AM
ACLU O.K. With Miami Police Raids

Stop The ACLU | November 29 2005 (http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2005/11/29/aclu-ok-with-miami-police-raids/)

I am absolutely shocked at this one! Is the ACLU of Florida going to be the black sheep of the ACLU??s fold? Across the country the ACLU has been screaming about the 4th Amendment, and our rights not to be unreasonably searched. They are opposing random searches at Subways, and fighting the Patriot Act with full force. So, after reading the ACLU of Florida??s statement on Miami Police raids, I was a little shocked.

Breitbart
Miami police announced Monday they will stage random shows of force at hotels, banks and other public places to keep terrorists guessing and remind people to be vigilant.

Deputy Police Chief Frank Fernandez said officers might, for example, surround a bank building, check the IDs of everyone going in and out and hand out leaflets about terror threats.

??This is an in-your-face type of strategy. It??s letting the terrorists know we are out there,? Fernandez said.

The operations will keep terrorists off guard, Fernandez said. He said al-Qaida and other terrorist groups plot attacks by putting places under surveillance and watching for flaws and patterns in security.

Police Chief John Timoney said there was no specific, credible threat of an imminent terror attack in Miami. But he said the city has repeatedly been mentioned in intelligence reports as a potential target.

Timoney also noted that 14 of the 19 hijackers who took part in the Sept. 11 attacks lived in South Florida at various times and that other alleged terror cells have operated in the area.

Both uniformed and plainclothes police will ride buses and trains, while others will conduct longer-term surveillance operations.

??People are definitely going to notice it,? Fernandez said. ??We want that shock. We want that awe. But at the same time, we don??t want people to feel their rights are being threatened. We need them to be our eyes and ears.?

I would expect that the ACLU would find this as a violation of the 4th amendment, but to my suprise we got this statement.

Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida, said the Miami initiative appears aimed at ensuring that people??s rights are not violated.

??What we??re dealing with is officers on street patrol, which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,? Simon said. ??We??ll have to see how it is implemented.?

I don??t know what to say! Their inconsistency on this issue has me completely confused. I think I actually agree with them here. While I am for searches on airplanes, and subways, it sounds a little scary that I might just be minding my own business and?BOOM, everyone is surrounded and asked for I.D.??s. I??m not against exercizes to protect us from mad men bombing us, so?where I agree with the ACLU here is that it will all depend on how this is implemented.

I??m sure that many liberals will be double shocked with this post. I think many will be shocked at the position the ACLU is taking on this one, and perhaps shocked again that of all people, I??m agreeing with them.
pisshead
11-30-2005, 06:18 PM
Miami Model: ACLU Shysters Stab America In The Back Again

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones | November 30 2005 (http://prisonplanet.com/index.html)

In response to the news (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2005/291105newtack.htm) that Miami police were going to conduct random sieges, checks of ID's and patrols of buses and trains, the ACLU stabbed America in the back again by shrugging their shoulders and stating that the new measures did not violate anybody's rights.

??What we??re dealing with is officers on street patrol, which is more effective and more consistent with the Constitution,? Simon said. ??We??ll have to see how it is implemented," said Howard Simon , executive director of ACLU Florida.

Consistent with the Constitution? This is the most clear violation of what it means to live in a free society than you're ever going to see short of when they cart us all off to those cozy ex-Soviet gulag camps.

The Miami model is akin to the police looking for a man driving a red Volkswagen in the western United States. They decide to raid a bank building in Albuquerque because the felon just might happen to be in that one building out of a list of potential hundreds of thousands.

It makes absolutely no sense unless it is designed to scare people into groveling to the overlords in black ski masks.

Miami police are amongst the most notoriously brutal in the country. During the November 2003 FTAA protests, police Chief John Timoney employed paramilitary tactics (http://www.sptimes.com/2003/11/30/Columns/Miami_crowd_control_w.shtml) to crush what were overwhelmingly peaceful protests. Police indiscriminately beat, arrested, searched, gassed, pepper sprayed and shot rubber bullets at protesters in a psychotic orgy of jackbooted tyranny.

http://prisonplanet.com/images/november2005/301105police2.jpg

Reports of plain clothed police agitating amongst the protesters matched similar tactics used during the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle.

Local chapters of the ACLU are staffed by well intentioned but often misled and deluded people. However, the state and national branches are firmly infiltrated and used to take big national attention cases, lose them and create bad case law.

The ACLU announcement was intended to put Americans to sleep when the cold hard facts of the Miami model should have everyone up in arms.

"Gee Martha, those random sieges, ID checks, searches and patrols sound like what we were told was bad about the Soviet Union, but look here, the ACLU says it doesn't violate our rights so I guess we don't have to worry about it."

One only has to peruse the historical origins (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2004/160904uncomfortabletruths.htm) of the ACLU to get a sense of who really controls this shill organization.

From its very inception in January 1920 the ACLU was created and controlled by a steering committee of ardent Communists, including Helen Keller, who wrote flattering diatribes about the national socialist policies of Adolf Hitler and also the worldwide communist movement.

Also in the core group was Norman Thomas, a six time Socialist Party presidential candidate and an advocate of the elimination of undesirables in society by means of a national eugenics program.

John Dewey, another founding member and socialist, is often cited as the foundation of today's educational theories. He believed the role of education was to train children to be autonomous servants of the state.

Radical Marxists, feminists, socialists and communists completely dominate the roster of the ACLU founders.

Built on a legacy of destroying everything that America stood for, how can we expect the ACLU to stand up and defend the virtues of American freedom today?

The ACLU is more interested in removing monuments outside courthouses and attacking Christianity than it is in opposing the police state.

The ACLU's response to the Miami police state model proves that the organization should be viewed as part of the problem and not the solution.

E mail the ACLU (http://www.aclu.org/contact/general/index.html) and vent your disgust.