Read My Lips - the blog

Legal loopholes: The ends justify the means?

Jed at newly blogrolled Boots and Sabers points to this story in which the use of threatened phony unlawful drug checkpoints along an Interstate Highway as a subterfuge so as to make those who are carrying drugs decide to make an illegal U-turn to avoid being checked. The Sheriff's Department then uses the illegal U-turn as a reason to stop the driver and then search the vehicle for drugs. Don't ya just love the way the War on Drugs is causing all this thinking on how we can get around the laws by the law enforcement agencies? See, you can't just stop everyone and search their car for drugs, because that is illegal. The Supremes have said so. So, how do you get around that ruling? You say you are going to do it, you put up a big sign saying you are going to do it, and those who think you are going to do it and don't want you to find anything will try to avoid letting you do it and turn around and go the other way. Guess what? Now they can do it, because you broke a law which allows them to stop you and search you incident to that arrest.

I don't know. I can see a very good fruit of the poisonous tree argument there. The check point is illegal, therefore advertising the checkpoint is illegal, therefore any action taken by the police resulting from activity associated with their illegal action should be illegal. The story says they have not netted any big fish in their efforts, but you can bet if they continue such and do net someone with some bucks, SCOTUS may be looking into this activity at some later point. What really concerns me is that law enforcement is so gung ho to use any means possible to stop something that has been shown to be unstoppable.

As I have said before, there has not been a decrease in drug supply or drug use; there has only been a movement from one drug to another, and with each succeeding movement, the drugs get more dangerous and more addictive. When can we get this damn drug mess out of the shadows and out into the open when we can deal with the real root of the drug problem? Where are the jobs? What sort of life can we offer people?

A nation full of McDonald's and Wal-Mart employees is not a nation where opportunity exists. Bring back the factories, bring back production, bring back construction. Take all those tax dollars spent on the damn War on Drugs and start using them to repair and rebuild the infrastructure. Give people a life worth living and maybe they will not find so many ways to block out the pain accompanying the one they have.