Monday, May 17, 2010

No Freedom for You

The Supreme Court has once again proven its willingness to eschew constitutionality in order to advance social or political goals. The issue in question concerns the most unsavory members of our society: sex offenders. A synopsis can be found here: Supreme Court: Sex offenders can be held indefinitely.

Naturally, I do not support providing these particular criminals with additional opportunities to ply their specific perversions. If our legal system adequately dealt with these people, that would be sufficient. If prevailing wisdom holds that these people are beyond reform, then laws should be written to include either permanent incarceration or capital punishment in response to their acts.

However, what this ruling does is allow for an arbitrary application of "danger to society" to be applied at the discretion of some federal representative. Today, the danger comes from sex offenders who are "beyond reform". Tomorrow, the litmus test will include those who will be repeat offenders of other crimes (i.e. 90% of current prison populations). Next week, the danger will be found in those who refuse to accept the "established science" that man is the sole cause of climate change or it will include those who have stubbornly chosen to believe in the absence of a higher power, depending of course on the dictates of those in power at the time.

As the fifth amendment clearly states:

"No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..."


By electing to place in the hands of bureaucrats and functionaries, independent of due process, the ability to extend incarceration indefinitely, the court has again decided to ignore the very document on which our system was built, a document to which each of these justices has sworn an oath to uphold.

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