Re: National Security Supersedes Constitution--Police State in Place?

From: Brian Atkins (brian@posthuman.com)
Date: Fri Dec 05 1997 - 22:45:01 MST


Is anyone writing all this down somewhere? :-)
Seriously, has anyone ever considered creating some kind of
Extropian Encyclopedia online that would collect up all of these
great bits of fact into one giant Yahoo-like browseable (sp?)
cornucopia of interesting things?

Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> > In the United States there is a docterine known as a "Clear and Present
> > Danger." If there is a "Clear and Present Danger" all rights under the
> > Constitution are null and void...
>
> There is no such general legal doctrine recognized by any court in the US.
> The words themselves come from a Supreme Court case having to do with the
> first amendment, where it was ruled that a clear and present danger of
> violence could justify restricting speech (the "fighting words" exception).
> The Supreme Court has ruled many times (for example, in U.S. v Nixon on
> the matter of his ignoring the subpoena of his tapes) that the executive
> branch cannot arbitrarily use "National Security" at its own discretion to
> violate Constitutional rights.
>
> Of course, that's the "official" position of the court. The reality of
> course is that they have a bigger army than you do. And law, after all,
> is a matter of what gets enforced by the ones with guns, not what happens
> to be written somewhere.
>
> --
> Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html>
> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
> are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
> for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC

-- 
The future has arrived; it's just not evenly distributed.
                                                       -William Gibson
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