-By Warner Todd Huston
All across America, people are asserting their Constitutional rights when confronted by police both on the streets and in those random traffic roadblock stops. It is being called “contempt of cop” and police hate this wave of libertarian-like insistence that they respect our Constitutional rights.
As police and government authorities increasingly step all over our rights, Americans are taking their Constitutional rights seriously these days taking their video cameras in hand and insisting that police respect us and stop treating us as guilty until proven innocent.
Recently Neil Macdonald noted that Americans are not only using their video cameras to help assert their Constitutional rights, but they are winning the battle against “heavy-handed cops” and federal officials.
“Contempt of cop, as the practice is known in libertarian circles,” Macdonald writes, “provokes the same rage at checkpoints that Snowden’s media interviews arouse in national security officials.”
Macdonald also points out that these illegal but all too common actions by police are also used by governments to steal money and property from we the people even if we aren’t charged with anything.
“Much worse are the ‘forfeiture’ rackets that have been used by some police here to separate people from their money and property, even if no offense is charged.”
“It’s called civil forfeiture, a federal law from the mid-1980s, and in some states police salaries have been directly tied to how much loot they can grab…”
So, America, keep up the pressure on these jackbooted thugs that pretend to be “officers of the law.” Your efforts to refuse illegal, unconstitutional orders by police are starting to make a dent as some agencies are beginning to take a second look at these oppressive actions. But we have a long way to go before we put police and other officials back in their place.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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