Freedom to Be Strip Searched

I'm not nostalgic about "the America of my childhood," mostly because it was a racist, misogynistic, homophobic, war-mongering, god-bothering, cops-beating-hippies, disco hellhole.

But I have always taken great pride that in my lifetime, America has made enormous civil-rights and civil-liberty progress. Life for minorities, women, LGBTs, atheists, criminal suspects and nonconformists of all stripes has generally - and in some cases enormously - improved.

But now the backlash has turned into outright regression.

Digby:

So, I guess all Americans should be prepared to be strip searched if they happen to find themselves in custody, no matter what the charge or (lack of) evidence of criminal behavior:

SNIP

Well at least they didn't make cavity searches mandatory, although I can't think why they wouldn't. If it's important for police to have the ability to make suspects who are arrested on a warrant for an unpaid fine strip and "spread their cheeks", it's hard to see what the logic would be in denying them the ability to feel around. After all, he could have had a deadly weapon stashed way up in there.

This is punitive, anyone can see that. They are "breaking down" suspects with humiliation to make them docile and afraid. There is no reason to grant the police blanket permission to do this except for a naive belief that anyone who is arrested must be guilty of something.

This by the way, is a perfect illustration of modern conservatism's definition of freedom. As per the previous post, they believe it is fundamental to liberty that property and wealth be protected from government coercion. But the police powers of the state easily extend to forcing individuals who are suspected of nothing more than failing to pay a fine to get naked and spread their cheeks for a policeman.

It's gone beyond granting the rights of individuals to corporations; for repugs and their pet judges, only corporations have rights.

Digby again:

It would seem that no pro-business Democratic policy is going to be quite good enough to protect the oppressed minority corporations from the predations of average citizens.

There's been a lot of commentary exposing the conservative members' hackish rhetoric and ignorant lack of understanding of how the health care market works. But that's not really the issue for these people. These conservatives' first principle is that government regulation of industry is an impingement of corporations' constitutional rights.

They are as activist as it is possible for a court to be, which, let's be honest here, is not unprecedented. But while the Warren Court took up the cause of individual human rights, the Roberts Court is trying to liberate wealth and property from the shackles of forced social responsibility. It's all about rights and freedom but it depends on whether you think those concepts rightly belong to individual human beings or whether you think that business and property have a greater claim. I think it's fairly clear what this court believes.

And law enforcement works for them, not us.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

Eric Lichtblau, one of the reporting team who exposed President Bush’s warrantless surveillance program, takes a look at its aftermath; with telecoms receiving immunity, police departments feel no compunction against tracking people by their cell phone.

The first price we paid for social progress and equality was economic security and income equality. Now we're having to give up our hard-won civil liberties. And they're coming after our social progress, too.

We don't have the luxury of fighting one battle at a time any more; if we don't stop them, they'll take it all away forever.