They really are the dumbest people in America, and most obnoxious, too. Here’s an example: police in Texas set up a DUI checkpoint, where cars were stopped and drivers quickly checked to make sure they weren’t driving with a blood alcohol over the legal limit. That’s a nuisance, I’m sure, but a minor inconvenience compared to sharing the road with drunk drivers.
Kory Watkins, a Texas libertarian and open carry proponent (so you already know he’s an idiot) objected to the police doing this job, so he was protesting at the check point, and apparently also somehow warning drivers approaching the check point so any drunkards could avoid it (a truly civic-minded fellow), when irony struck.
A drunk driver was going around 100 mph and smashed into the back of me,Watkins said on his Facebook page.I could not control the car, I went sideways, then flipped 3 times, hit a cement piller to stop my roll and put me in a ditch on The side of (Interstate) 287. I was 2 miles always from being home. I am incredible lucky to be breathing. I can’t tell you how lucky I am to be alive.
Wait, there’s more! He doesn’t believe drunk driving should be illegal — it should only be a crime to smash into people.
If someone goes out to eat and has a few drinks, drives home and is responsible in doing so. Nobody is hurt, no property was damaged, there is no crime.
So drink yourself into a half-blind stupor, get into your car, weave all over the road, and the police should just step back and watch until you run over a little old lady trying to cross the road…then they can arrest you. Not before.
Jesus. Libertarians.
But wait, there’s still more!
The police were right there, and came over to help. They discovered that he didn’t have a valid driver’s license. Why? Because he’s a fucking libertarian.
I don’t ask for permission to drive a car I paid for on a road I paid for,Watkins said.
So they gave him a $300 ticket.
Now Watkins is angry because everybody is smirking at the irony and laughing at him. Sorry, guy. FREE SPEECH. You get to be a slapstick dumbass, we get to point and laugh. It’s the libertarian way!
Libertarian: from the latin for “I’m too lazy to think this through”.
At last!! Some proof that there is a god!!
And the bugger has a sense of humour!!
I hope he realizes that the only reason he had a chance of survival at all is because of regulations on car manufacturing.
Right, and putting a loaded gun to somebody’s head should only be illegal once you pull the trigger, right?
Was he wearing one of those dirty, Socialist, Swedish seatbelts?
I work in information security. Preventative policies and implementations do more for incident identification and recovery than any amount of post-breach efforts. Logically, this should apply to other, similar fields such as preservation of human life and property and prevention of crime.
More than that, not thinking something should be illegal isn’t the same as something being legal. If I were a murdering, murder-faced murderer, I would probably think that murder shouldn’t be illegal. That wouldn’t stop anyone from locking me up.
I bet he also doesn’t brush his teeth because the dentist can always remove the tooth, right?
Oh boy:
Shopping for groceries.
The rifle is probably to defend himself against fedora-haters.
And of course he’s running for political office, because Texas.
Aww, was the poor freedom-loving fellow injured? If so, I hope he has the courage of his convictions to boycott physicians and nurses duly licensed by Texas or any other state, because freedom and reasons, and also too, no freedom-loving doctor should have to ask permission from Gubmint to practice medicine.
I had to follow the links on this one because, seriously, this couldn’t be true, could it? But there’s a picture of him with the story wearing a fucking Trilby hat. For fuck’s sake, the Onion couldn’t have written this any better. And yet there’s no hint that it’s not real. Cheezus.
And now he’s appealing for handouts to buy a car! What a moocher!
Though I wouldn’t be too surprised if his less stupid point of DUI checkpoints being for revenue rather than safety is accurate. Apparently that does have some facts to back it up. But it sounds like just also use the checkpoints to catch people driving without licenses. And that sounds perfectly fine to me. Shrug.
According to those articles, there’s an absurd amount of people driving without licenses which blows my mind.
Moggie@11: let me guess, he also didn’t have insurance, because FREEDUMB ?
I’m not even sure if insurance is valid if you don’t have a license.
Wow, 300$, what a bargain.
Round these parts here driving without licence is a felony and you can go to jail and/or pay 180 days equivalent.
So the police should absolutely not do anything to prevent drunk drivers from causing accidents before the fact, but he does expect them to magically arrive on the scene as soon as there’s an accident in time to pursue and catch hit and run drivers.
I know it’s not nice, but it’s one of the cases where I wished the other party had no insurance and now he could go and see how wonderful “arbitration” works when the opposing party has no money but you have a 7 digit medical bill…
So he claims the right to carry a gun in case he’s threatened, but doesn’t agree that people should be stopped from driving whilst under the influence of an intoxicating substance in case their intoxication leads to them causing harm to others.
If driving recklessly isn’t a crime until you actually hit someone, then threatening someone wouldn’t be a crime to you actually hurt someone. Shooting someone in self defense becomes a lot more difficult, they weren’t doing anything wrong waving a gun in your face, you shot them without provocation…
Everyone else paid for a law that says yes, you do. And if paying for things is a measure of their right to exist, then that law cost far more than your car.
What kind of scrub lolbertarian doesn’t view the kkkollectively funded road as something other than kkkommunist oppression?
I walked on the sidewalk, but it belonged to the public.
No pavement under my feet, only shards of tyranny.
Why do so many of the OpenCarry people appear to know nothing about actual gun-handling?
Right, and putting a loaded gun to somebody’s head should only be illegal once you pull the trigger, right?
I think they’re working to implement that in Florida right now.
He’s not a libertarian at all. He believes in his freedom to take risks with my life by driving drunk near me, but what about my freedom to not want to take part in that risk? He doesn’t believe in liberty for others, just himself, so he’s not a libertarian (someone who believes in a philosophy of liberty and self-autonomy for all), he’s just plain old selfish.
Like most who call themselves libertarians…
No True Libertarian™?
Is the ambulance driver rushing him to the hospital allowed to be drunk?
I agree with PZ that this guy is an idiot. But, I do not agree that DUI checkpoints are merely a “nuisance” or “a minor inconvenience,” regardless to what it may be compared. DUI checkpoints, in my opinion, are a violation of the Constitution and our civil rights. They are used for more than trying to determine whether people have been drinking; especially in places like Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, where they are used to find undocumented immigrants, as ways to enter vehicles to search for drugs or other contraband, as vulgar displays of police power, and (as one other insightful poster pointed out) as a revenue source for other violations. This guy was a rednecked douche, but he was right that the checkpoint was bad policy. Also, it is not illegal to drink and drive, provided that one’s BAC is below a certain limit. In Colorado, a driver is presumed unimpaired if the BAC is .05 or less. Police need Reasonable Articlulable Suspicion to stop a person or a car. They need Probable Cause to conduct a search or arrest; neither of these exist at a checkpoint, hence the checkpoint becomes unconstitutional. Viewing this type of government intrusion as a mere inconvenience leads to policies like “stop and frisk” and other intrusive, illegal, totalitarian activities. Once power is given to an agency, it becomes very hard to take it away. I apologize for the rant, but I see so many people being abused by the government, that I feel I need to say something when I see people give this type of intrusion a pass.
Actually sounds like he’s veered from mere libertarian whack-jobbery into full FOTL territory.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freeman-on-the-land
I used to be surprised by the number of people who would drive up to the bank, where I work, and not have a driver’s license as proof of identification to cash a check or open an account. (It still happens frequently, but it no longer surprises me.) Around here, though, it’s less likely to be a libertarian reason as a suspended license for DUI. Which brings us back to the original story.
I better example is Thom Satterlee, formerly of Oso, Washington. Formerly because there was a huge landslide in his area and he was living under it. He is still there but also still dead.
Satterlee was a Sovereign Citizen patriot loon who thought government regulations like zoning and logging regulations were just wrong and had long running disputes with Snohomish county. The irony is that if the zoning and logging regulations were more rationally followed, he and 30 or so people might still be alive.
If reality were electricity, then Watkins would be a mental blackout. He’s disconnected from reality.
—–
congaboy (#27) –
You’re as out of touch with reality as Watkins if you believe what you’re saying.
Driving is not a right, it is a privilege that can be taken away. If you don’t like DUI checkpoints, sell your car and walk. Then you won’t have to worry about being stopped, even if you are drunk.
Drunk driving is bad, but do you really want, I dunno, the fucking Ferguson police department to have the power to randomly stop brown people while ostensibly looking for drunks? I’m guessing stop and frisk is cool as well? What about the TSA running their hands over your genitalia? Both are ostensibly meant to prevent violence as well.
I get that libertarians are for the most part pretty fucking stupid, but I sure as hell don’t want the idiots responsible for this, this, and this, to have yet another reason to get into the business of brown people or the mentally ill because really bad shit tends to happen. Because god knows cops are so great at telling the difference between somebody who is intoxicated and somebody who is having an insulin-related episode or is mentally ill.
Police encounters might be a fucking “minor nuisance” for old, white men in possession of their mental faculties, but for a lot of people they are most definitely fucking not. So yes, ha ha at the gun toting libertarian douche, but for god sake check your fucking privilege.
Sure, sure, how much of that road did you pay for? Is it 100% paid for by you alone? I think not. You then gotta ask permission from all the other owners, before you drive all over it. You know those lines on the road, and signs along the side of the road? Those are RULES, all the owners agreed to put on, for driving on their road. You wanna drive on it, you gotta follow the owners’ rules. Get it?
This story makes no sense. I-287 isn’t in Texas. In Texas, DUI is a minor with any detectable amount of alcohol. Drunk driving is a DWI. And DWI checkpoints are unconstitutional in Texas. Holt v. Texas 887 S.W.2d 16 (Tex.Crim.App. 1994) .
The best guess I’ve got is that they’re talking about State Highway 287 and a driver’s license checkpoint. Driver’s license checkpoints are worth protesting because they’re being used to harass suspected undocumented immigrants.
DUI checkpoints, in my opinion, are a violation of the Constitution and our civil rights.
But sharing the road with people who are too drunk to operate a fast-moving ton of metal safely is perfectly okay?
Dude, have you been reading ANY news lately? There’s far bigger violations of people’s civil rights than this for you to get upset about.
Actually, left0ver1under @ #31, congaboy makes some good pints about police abusing the presumed purpose of a DUI checkpoint for other purposes. Those abuses regularly target minorities like illegal immigrants and black people. In fact, I believe in some states (I know this has been in the news recently), the police do perform otherwise unnecessary full searches of vehicles and take possessions and cash money that is allowed to be collected for the police department.
There are legitimate reasons to be wary of DUI checkpoints and police officers. Congaboy isn’t out of touch with reality. None of that reality, however, lines up with Kory Watkins’s reasons for protest.
Drunk driving is bad, but do you really want, I dunno, the fucking Ferguson police department to have the power to randomly stop brown people while ostensibly looking for drunks?
No, I want local cops to actually look for drunks, and DUI checkpoints seem a decent means of doing so. And if they also find people who actually have outstanding warrants out for them, that’s not a horrible thing either.
If your local cops are untrustworthy, then something needs to be done about that. But depriving them of the ability to do their jobs AT ALL is not the answer. If it was, we could just disband malfunctioning police departments and everything would be okay.
@ U Frood, 19
Good point … I wonder what happens if you tell a libertard like mr. Watkins that DUI laws is Stand-Your-Ground for traffic?
Probably time to look for a splatter-free zone because their head will assplode.
left0ver1under@31 wrote:
Just to clarify that statement a little: Yes, correct, you can walk around as drunk as possible, but do not “open carry” your “liquid of choice” (that’s why brown bags for bottles, so popular).
Always seemed so silly, to me, that technicality of drinking-regulations.
Alex the Pretty Good, can you please not use ableist slurs like ‘libertard’ here? I might think you’d know that already considering your avatar. Thanks.
First as was pointed out up thread the right of the police to stop you because they feel like it does seem to run counter to just about all of our country’s ideals. By the same token it should be ok for a cop to stop you and frisk you on the street because you might be carrying an illegal gun, or drugs, particularly if you are a white man, you could be about to start a shooting spree.
Essentially, the article seems to be a kind of a stopped clock thing: Libertarian right about check points, wrong about everything else. Police check points do run counter to the idea that really you have to do something before the police can mess with you. By the way, It does not look like the check point caught the drunk who ran into the libertarian, so there is that.
Finally, I’ve represented hundreds of people charged with OVI and the cops always have a reason to stop the person: they went over the white line on the side of the road, they stopped for a green light, they didn’t do a complete stop at a stop sign.
Finally, most people are not drunk when they earn their charges: .05 or .08 as it is in Ohio does not indicate that one is impaired, but rather that one is simply over the legal limit. And those are the people who are caught at those check points normally not the ones who blow .25 and above.
Hmm, looking up which states allow sobriety checkpoints, Texas isn’t one of them.
Actually, DUI checkpoints are constitutional. So said SCOTUS in 1990 (from Wiki):
The effectiveness of DUI checkpoints versus “saturation policing” for DUI is still a moot point.
#31, left0ver1under
“You Must Be At Least This White to Walk Unmolested Past The Police.”
etc.
….that explains so much.
….THATSHIPHASSAILED
Libertarian right about check points, wrong about everything else.
No, they’re wrong about checkpoints as well. A properly-conducted DUI checkpoint serves a public-safety need that (temporarily)overrides the drivers’ right to privacy. (And where’s the “privacy” when you’re on a public road with a large metal vehicle that poses a potential hazard to other people on said public road? We don’t have a right to know who you’re shagging or how you voted, but we do have a right to know if you’re too impaired to drive.)
Uh, from my experience with a BAC in the 0.5-0.8 range according to body-weight-and-intake calculators, yes it fucking does.
He doesn’t believe in liberty for others, just himself, so he’s not a libertarian…
Actually, that’s a characteristic of nearly all libertarians: all they care about is their own “liberty,” and if the government has to do anything to enforce anyone else’s liberty, that’s “TYRANNY!!!”
I don’t have a problem with late-night sobriety checkpoints near bar strips, but in Texas, checkpoints are a well-known revenue generator. For example, there’s the infamous Sierra Blanca “border” stop, where Willie Nelson and Yours Truly were busted for weed. It’s 80 miles from the nearest crossing, but there’s a bend of the Rio Bravo that comes within 25 miles of the I-10, so under post 9-11 rules, you can have a border stop up to 25 miles from the border. Every drug dealer and coyote in the southwest knows of this stop, so they never catch undocumented workers or big drug runners, but what they do is stop every van, or person with long hair, or person with a guitar in the back seat, or person under age 30, or anybody who fits their profile of maybe having weed in the car (for example, their biggest field day is to and from the SXSW Festival in Austin), and they get their $1000 fine and $500 court fees plus the bail plus the impound fees from dozens of out-of-state travelers per day, rather than taxing their businesses and rich citizens at a civilized level. It’s all about the revenue, not public safety.
Texas is short of brains.
When I started practicing law the limit was .15. I suspect that it might have been too high, but Askyroth, you are just wrong about most people being impaired at the .05-.08 range. I’m sure you can get lots of police to agree with you, though.
I probably didn’t state my position on check points right, Raging Bee. They are legal, just in my opinion not right, nor from what I’ve been able to see particularly effective. I suspect that more police interference in my life will probably make me safer, I just do not think that police should have the right to mess with me if I’m not doing anything that they can see that would warrant it. Arbitrarily stopping everyone or every 5th or 10th person at an intersection to see if they’ve been drinking and incidentally to look in their car just strikes me as a level of intrusion that I don’t believe is right.
@7 Giliell,
I worked with a guy like that some years back. He was so whacked that he didn’t trust big government, big pharma, big dentistry, pretty much anything. I was young and naive and I used to argue with him when he said that he planned to just have all his teeth extracted as they go bad.
#27 congaboy
I disagree with your assessment of this. Driving is a privilege, not a right. And if you cannot conduct yourself with that vehicle in a way that doesn’t threaten the safety of others around you, then you shouldn’t be able to have a license. There are SOBER people who are out on the roads that are putting others at risk.
Drunk driving is a pretty serious thing, and the checkpoint is one way of potentially preventing a tragedy. It doesn’t immediately follow that it’s a ploy to violate the rights of citizens.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls @ 43
States can give their citizens greater constitutional protections than the federal government does. DWI checkpoints are unconstitutional in Texas, Holt v. Texas 887 S.W.2d 16 (Tex.Crim.App. 1994).
Raging Bee @35:
I understand where you’re coming from, but this is wandering into Dear Muslima territory.
Nerd of Redhead @43,
The devil is in the details. Scotus did not give blanket approval to all DUI checkpoint schemes. Even the Wiki summary of Sitz that you posted uses the qualifier “properly conducted.” If you look at the case that qwints cited @34, you’ll see that the Texas court distinguished Sitz on the grounds that Sitz involved a checkpoint system that was designed and approved by a statewide “politically accountable governing body,” and that the Texas system being challenged in that case didn’t meet that standard. There’s a dissenting opinion in the Texas case that makes a good argument that this is a bit of a creative reading of Sitz, but anyway….
The basic point is that the constitutionality of any particular DUI checkpoint is still debatable. Obviously if a state follows the Michigan example that was approved in Sitz, it will be on fairly safe ground.
Reactions start to be prolonged at 0.03. Yes, at 0.08 you ARE impaired. You are about as impaired as you are when you’re texting while driving.
If you think that obviously you are still perfectly capable of driving with no effects at all, then I don’t want to share a road with you.
No, you’re about as impaired as talking on a cell phone while driving. “A Comparison of the Cell Phone Driver and the Drunk Driver”. Texting is far worse than talking. “Distracted Driving and Risk of Road Crashes among Novice and Experienced Drivers”
Cars are big and scary and made of metal(!) and also there could be DRUNK PEOPLE, therefore, the concept of ‘probable cause’ is quaint and antiquated and no longer applies and we should throw it out because of scary things that make me scared. USA! USA! USA!
I’d rather have the deterrent of a DUI checkpoint. Thanks for playing the “Which Necessary Evil Must We Accept For Higher Overall Safety Game.” If you appealed to some high-ideal like capital ‘F’ Freedom or ‘L’ Liberty then you ‘L’ Lose. If your objection was due to the minorities being frequent targets, then you get a passing grade if you showed how prevalent such an outcome is. Either way, you still came nowhere near tying my high score.
Sorry, my bad. But I think the overall point still stands
“Attempted” murder? Nobody was hurt! Nobody died! THOUGHT CRIME!
DUI checkpoints and immigration checkpoints are totes fine by me, I’m a white man! Heck, I could probably go through a checkpoint drunk!
What the heck, people? They’re legal, but so is gunning black people down because they’re threatening.
The easiest way to avoid driving drunk is to live in an urban center where there’s good bike paths and mass transit. At most parties I go to, nobody drives home drunk, because nobody got there by driving. It’s easy to feel superior, but I recognize it’s much harder to avoid driving drunk in the suburbs.
When I did live in the suburbs, whether people drove after drinking wasn’t determined by whether there’d be cops, but by whether there was a way for them to go home without driving — the answer was typically no. Sometimes, crashing one the couch was an option, but again, typically no (have to go home because reasons, like kids, job, whatever). They’d all swear that they weren’t drunk, no sirree, feeling just fine, and probably only a few were above .08%. One acquaintance got caught, and there was much tut-tutting, but not much change in behaviour by the rest of us.
I probably didn’t state my position on check points right, Raging Bee. They are legal, just in my opinion not right…
Your opinion fails to account for the dangers of drunk driving, and the relative difficulty of stopping a drunk driver from being dangerous AFTER he’s taken to the road. If we all had cars that refused to start when the driver was impaired, then the DUI checkpoints would not be necessary. But since the ideal Plan A doesn’t currently work, we’re still stuck with a better-than-nothing Plan B. The most important question is WHERE those DUI checkpoints get set up: some places make perfect sense (like an entrance to a major highway that’s near a cluster of pubs), while others are clearly situated for some purpose other than catching drunk drivers.
I find it a bit odd that among 63 comments (so far) there is only one passing reference to the TSA, who are charged with treating every airline passenger as a potential terrorist.
Here is at least one shitty outcome. Again, DUI checkpoints are great if you’re a privileged white individual. If you’re one of those dirty illegals who can’t get a fucking license, it’s not so fun.
I didn’t think I-287 was in Texas, so I googled it. Turns out it is near NYC, in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey.
doublereed@12:
Shrug.
1) Spell my name right, shit for brains.
2) AHEM:
Unless you’re shit-stupid enough to think “impaired driver” means “literally physically incapable of operating the car itself in isolation, without reference to road conditions….
You know there is always a good reason for more police activity. always. As so many have pointed out above. But I’m particularly thankful to throwaway for explaining the only proper way to approach this issue.
Here’s another reference, a bit more specific:
throwaway@59:
I don’t know. Maybe my brain is just so saturated with Ferguson and Cleveland and the like that it’s really disinclined to think anything nice about cops lately. I can still appreciate the irony of the story, however. If he’s anything like the libertarians I know, I highly doubt the guy would object if the checkpoint was specifically designed to target the dirty illegals.
Fuck libertarians.
Actually, now that I think of it, I’m amazed that the right wing hasn’t launched a crusade to make driving drunk illegal. After all, we have an amendment to the Constitution which forbids the government from complete eradication of alcohol as a form of regulation (the 21st), in parallel with the amendment which forbids the government from complete eradication of guns as a form of regulation (the 2nd). Using the same “logic”, we ought to let anyone get drunk anywhere at any time, and the people who cause car accidents and other disasters are just “bad guys” or “irresponsible drinkers” who can be safely ignored no matter what the statistics say about it.
@67 nich
Jesus christ.
@nich (#71) I can’t really follow who’s talking about whom in this thread anymore, but the guy in the story seems to be anti-cop across the board. His Facebook page includes a post where he calls out right wingers for their use of a photoshopped image of a Ferguson protest sign and he generally seems to be every bit as incensed about the killing of Michael Brown as about check points. I think the guy’s wrong about a lot of things, but I think he’s pretty much the left side of libertarian, if you will.
When DUI checkpoints were introduced in California many many yonks ago (I was living there at the time), they had to be clearly signposted and with a signposted “detour” that would avoid the checkpoint. The reasoning was something along the lines that you are warned there is a (potential) stop up ahead, and if you choose to not take the detour to avoid it, you certainly haven’t got any grounds for complaint about being stopped. (Not even if black, …)
I have no idea if that rule is still in effect in some form, or how many impaired, unlicensed, or so on drivers were not-caught due to taking the detour.
What was funny was the very first DUI checkpoint set up (for several hours one night) in the area where I lived caught exactly one intoxicated driver: A bicyclist.
What about the TSA running their hands over your genitalia?
I’ve been through airport security many times, and not once has anyone run their hands over my genitalia. Which raises an important question: What am I doing wrong?
@67 nich
That article says that the “vast majority” of unlicensed drivers are undocumented immigrants, which certainly makes sense. That angle certainly did not cross my mind. I was thinking more general police abuse/harassment and racial profiling. Very disturbing.
My best guess? Your race privileges you from the harassment lots of others have experience over the last decade.
Classy as always, Azkyroth.
I’m curious, along with others, about what exactly this checkpoint really was. His posting just says he was “cop watching”. As others have pointed out, it was not on I-287, but Texas Highway 287 (the author at Raw Story seems to have ignorantly inserted the “Interstate”). This story calls it a “traffic safety checkpoint”.
I count myself among those who are OK with DUI checkpoints, though not without reservation. I’m 100% OK with laws against drunk driving, which I thinks, along with not having a license, is where this guy goes fully off the rails. But I also think that maybe there should be a sort of Miranda warning for checkpoints that requires cops to tell people they don’t have to open their trunk or consent to a search. In general, accepting a driver license includes consent to sobriety checks as part of the contract, but I think it’s reasonable to ask whether DUI ought to constitute probable cause for a vehicle or personal search.
I am against the border checkpoints run by DHS, even though many of the people most against them I think are idiots, and in those cases you do not have to consent to a search, but they’ll do everything in their power to convince you otherwise, sometimes including exceeding their legal authority.
But the problem with the libertarian argument is that it tends toward a sort of extremism that, if followed to its logical conclusion leads to the notion that we ought not to have any police at all. That’s not a slippery slope, that’s the actual argument: we ought not to trade any of our freedom for safety. Well of course we ought, we always have, it’s the foundation of all complex human societies. The question is, and always has been, just what freedoms we need to maintain and how to do so. The problem we have now is one of the police not facing sufficient oversight, particularly from the courts, which have come to have far too cozy a relationship with them.
One really easy administrative solution that could fix a lot (though hardly all) of the problems with police would be to sever the financial incentive to police departments. No confiscation, no impound, no revenue from police enforcement should find its way to police budgets.
nich @71
I think wanting to be a police officer should be grounds for automatic dismissal of the application to become a police officer. All I see is sadism anymore in what they accomplish. Authoritarian sadists with badges and guns… Maybe it’s the one profession where we need to tell people not to ‘do what you love?’
Rather than being misconstrued – I am all for DUI checkpoints with limited enforceability of other laws. Yes, pick up the man with a warrant for murder. No, don’t take the undocumented worker’s work vehicle.
I want them to act as deterrents for their raison d’ete. If the knock-on effects aren’t acceptable then it does become harder to justify their existence.
What?! Everyone knows traffic laws don’t apply to bicyclists in California!!! *tableflip*
Talking like a white person with money does not make one morally superior. Get that through your thick skull.
I notice you aren’t even slightly chiding the condescending dipshit who deliberately mangled my name.
Azkyroth:
Deliberately mangled? A couple things. The “s” is right next to the “z,” looks very similar to it so could easily be misread; and this is not your real name, nor is it a common name in any natural language which someone might reasonably be expected to be familiar with. So what the fuck is your problem?
I mean, maybe you’re right, but how you got from A to B so quickly is pretty hard to imagine.
If you guys don’t want DUI checks (or stop and frisk) to be used to raise revenue, then why not pay some taxes? That way you could have well managed, properly trained police – free from corruption, political bias and racism, but only if you made that a priority.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Left0ver1under @31, Raging Bee @ 35, Pianoman @ 53:
Perhaps I am out of touch with reality, I practice criminal law defense and I defend DUIs and DWAIs, so I am biased about police intrusions into our lives. As for driving being a privilege: that does not allow the State to violate Constitutionally protected civil rights. Despite an activity being a privilege, our Constitutionally protected rights still apply to search and seizures, whether we are in our homes, walking on the street, or driving in our cars. Driving privilege does mean that you can lose your driving privileges very easily, but that’s not the same thing. Even though I defend DUIs, I don’t condone people driving drunk. It is very dangerous. Police are trained to detect poor driving and when they see it, they have grounds for a stop. Also, there are hotlines for citizens to call to report bad and drunk driving and that gives the police RAS to stop cars too. There are safety measures in place; we can’t stop all crimes from happening, but we can address them when they do happen. Be careful about how much State intrusion you allow, because once you grant it, it’s nearly impossible to take away.
We share the road and this world with some very bad people. There will always be bad people and good people doing stupid things. We have a system in place that works as well as any system can. It is easy to think that giving the police greater powers will keep us safe, but that is a fallacy. We all need to encourage friends and family to not drive drunk.
Also, SCOTUS may have ruled that checkpoints are OK, but that doesn’t mean that they really are. I think SCOTUS got this one wrong. SCOTUS isn’t infallible (if they were, they’d be the POPEUS). John Roberts wants to do away with the Exclusionary Rule; a finding by a previous SCOTUS, that I believe is very important in keeping police and DAs honest. Just because SCOTUS rules on a thing, doesn’t mean that they get it right—it means we have to suffer it until the issue can be raised again before a new court.
@Maureen Brian (#86) – I’m all for it.
They want the freedom to be assholes themselves, not freedom from assholery. No way to avoid it, so just go with flow, I guess.
But yeah, if you ask me, it would be nice. :)
1) Despite your implication that this might be an innocent mistake that could happen to anyone, I have used this name since late 2005 and have never observed this substitution made by anyone who did not strike me as breathtakingly smarmy for other reasons.
2) The most straightforward interpretation of changing the z to an s in responding to me is that the changer assumed I was deliberately mispelling “ask” in order “to look cool” and that the change was “correcting” it which carries fairly unflattering implications given that the actual practice of doing things like replacing s with z “to look cool” is associated with stereotypical Stupid Teenager Culture. At best, it’s an insulting presumption, and at worst it’s a deliberate way of being dismissive.
3) yehT t’nod yllaer kool ralimis.
By comparison. Do you really think all the cretinists who address our host as “Meyers” are doing it by accident?
But the problem with the libertarian argument is that it tends toward a sort of extremism that, if followed to its logical conclusion leads to the notion that we ought not to have any police at all.
The other problem with “the libertarian argument” is that the most effective long-term solution to state and local government abuses (including police abuses and misconduct) has almost always been Federal intervention (i.e., the Brown decision, the Miranda decision, the Voting Rights Act, etc.) — which libertarians tend to hate even more than the original tyrannical abuses. Lots of libertarians pretend to condemn police misconduct — but how many of them said anything in support of a Federal civil-rights action to counteract such misconduct and ensure any sort of accountability?
A cop’s job is supposed to be hard. Have you ever been stopped, refused consent for a vehicle search because you know there’s nothing in the car to find, then watched as the ‘drug dog’ refused to show any interest whatsoever in your car, but despite that the cop snickers a little and says “Sir the K-9 Officer has indicated the likely presence of contraband inside the vehicle, I now have probable cause to conduct a search”?
@86 Maureen
Rich people first.
As for driving being a privilege: that does not allow the State to violate Constitutionally protected civil rights. Despite an activity being a privilege, our Constitutionally protected rights still apply to search and seizures, whether we are in our homes, walking on the street, or driving in our cars.
First, driving a motor vehicle on a public road is NOT the same as acting stupid in the privacy of your home — it’s nowhere near as “private” because it’s in a public place where other people’s safety — and yes, their rights too — are at stake. And second, cops can act without a warrant in cases of imminent danger; and the possibility that a drunk person could kill someone (or himself) by driving irresponsibly is more of an imminent danger than most of the things a similarly drunk person can do in his/her home.
@94 Raging Bee
I’m sorry, but I’m also sick of these deliberate weakenings of the 4th Amendment in the name of the War on Drugs. It’s bullshit, man, and now lots terrible precedents for our privacy rights. If there’s no reason for the cop to stop you, then there’s no reason for the cop to stop you.
Sounds like a closet sovereign citizen
Raging Bee @ 94: I never equated driving as having the same expectation of privacy as does one’s home. I said that that despite driving being a privilege, our Constitutionally protected rights still apply. Police need RAS to conduct a stop and they need PC to arrest, regardless of whether you are in a car or walking on the street. Police need PC and a warrant or an exception to the 4th Amendment to enter a home or private area of a business. I do have some experience and knowledge of the law. And the Constitution protects the innocent and the guilty equally, whether we share the road or our in the privacy of our homes. A thing for which we should all be immensely grateful.
moarscienceplz
You’ve been around here way too long for that tone-trolling bullshit, old bean.
Congaboy
I’ll accept that as a working hypothesis for now.
Well, you already sound like a total asshole, what with describing preventing people from endangering their fellow citizens as ‘police intrusions into our lives.’
Here’s a hint for you: the U.S. Constitution is not holy writ, nor is it perfect. Indeed, it guarantees rights it shouldn’t and fails to guarantee rights it should.
As noted above, merely stating that the Constitution permits or doesn’t permit something is not actually a valid argument about whether a thing should or should not be done. Keep in mind that the Constitution, as originally written, allowed chattel slavery.
Not nearly easily enough.
Yes, it is. And it’s something that people are apparently not willing to give up doing on their own. My preferred solution would be to simply remove ~98% of drivers from the streets permanently, leaving only those actually trained to professional standards, but that will require considerable changes in our infrastructure. In the meantime, we do what we can to minimize the number of people these assholes kill.
And what about the ones who no-one notices/calls in until they kill someone?
Can’t stop all crimes != can’t significantly reduce the incidence of certain crimes. Once again, you show a remarkably poor ability to build a case for someone trained in law. Possibly it’s because your brain is so stuffed with libertarian bullshit.
I’d rather deal with them before that, on account of there’s a lot less death, trauma, and damage that way.
This kind of bullshit right here, incidentally, is exactly what I’m talking about.
And this, right here. See, what we can do is reduce the opportunity for doing bad/harmfully stupid things, and reduce the scope of possible damage from same. We do this by means of things like limiting access to firearms (ok, we, in the U.S., don’t do that, but that’s one of the ways it’s done), and keeping careful track of the sorts of things people hurtling about in multi-ton hunks of metal at high speeds are doing (once again, mostly hypothetically).
Oh wait, you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder
Or this bullshit here. Giving the authorities scope to deal with harmful behaviours which they were not previously able to deal with does indeed increase safety. The police in the U.S. need major reform, of course, but that is not an indictment of the concept of policing generally, only of the racist and corrupt nature of U.S. institutions.
My family and friends don’t. Now what?
This, this is really fucking funny coming from someone who’s spent their whole comment citing the U.S. Constitution like a Christian cites the Bible.
I’ve seen no evidence that anything is keeping police or DAs honest in the U.S. right now.
Just because the Constitution says a thing, doesn’t mean they got it right —it means we have to suffer it forever, because significant amendments to the U.S. Constitution are basically impossible at this point.
Azkyroth, #90:
Here are a few things that don’t qualify a person as having “shit for brains”:
-Typos
-Misreading something accidentally
-Dyslexia
-Not knowing your big important pseudonym, in conjunction with how smarmy they seem to you for other reasons
-Not caring to double-check the spelling, because it’s clearly not your real name, which you might have some reason to actually give a fuck about in situations unlike the one we’re in now
I’ll add that entire backward sentences (or words) are much easier to recognize than a single letter, especially when it’s in the context of a nonsense-word like the case of your pseudonym. This is all much simpler, more straightforward and more in accord with the evidence at hand than your theory, which is now conjuring up even more assumptions about the content of their mental states concerning how and why they supposedly had this malicious intent, just to do something completely trivial of no real consequence to you or anyone else. All of that is to say it’s getting more unlikely as we go, and it was already based on no evidence whatsoever. Your question about “cretinists” and a much-more-famous-person whose blog this is (PZ) is beside the point, and even if you thought this should actually be addressed here, it still wouldn’t be about “all” of them but about a probability.
Whatever. Blah. Too much off-topic virtual ink has already been spilled on this bullshit. But this shit you’re pulling? Ironically enough, that actually is shit-for-brains sort of stuff.
Err… did anyone who’s defending DUI checkpoints check out nich’s link in comment #67? It’s kind of huge. I feel like all of you are under the assumption that a DUI checkpoint’s purpose is to prevent drunk driving. That’s not necessarily a good assumption at all.
Not to mention that the initial claim of the libertarian is that it is for revenue, not safety. The claim is not “gosh what an inconvenience.”
Dalilama @98: “Well, you already sound like a total asshole,”
And you sound like a self-righteous little prick. You don’t know what you’re talking about. But, go on keep spewing that verbal diarrhea you think is clever banter. You appear to not understand the law and how our criminal justice system works, but that certainly shouldn’t stop you from saying stupid things. Good luck to you if you are ever accused of a criminal offense; you don’t actually have to commit a crime to go to prison or get the death penalty. Sure, our system has flaws and makes mistakes, that’s where people like me come in; we fight, every day, to protect people from being steamrolled by overzealous prosecution. But, I’m sure that if you’re ever arrested , you will not request an attorney, you will waive your rights, and you’ll make whatever confessions the police and DAs request.
I repeat:
Ten years, less two months, and NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON WHO WASN’T ALREADY AN ASSHOLE has made that mistake. Including people with dyslexia.
Also, what I do and don’t find to be insulting or dismissive doesn’t actually require your approval.
Fuck off.
I do kind of like the way Dalilliama starts out by describing a defense attorney as being a total asshole for defending people accused of committing a crime. Kind of impossible to argue with someone like that, not because they are right, but because they are obviously so closed minded, authoritarian, and pompous. Although given that I am also a defense attorney maybe I’m just prejudiced against closed minded authoritarian types.
Who would have thought that there would be so many law and order types here on this site. I’m a little surprised.
No, liar, Dalilama described him as a total asshole for dismissing, in conversation, the harm done by people who actually do commit that crime, not for doing his job as a defense attorney in the courtroom, as this sentence is deliberately constructed to imply.
With this level of attention to detail and reading comprehension, I pity your clients.
Wait, am I allowed to assume that completely misrepresenting the position of the thread consensus reflects a lack of attention to detail and/or reading comprehension? Maybe all those keys are just near the others, or maybe he just doesn’t give a shit what we’re saying and is just having the argument HE wants to have, but that doesn’t mean he’s being dismissive or dishonest. Or maybe he has anencephaly.
Azkyroth, was I the one who misspelled your name? Wow, if I was feel free to misspell mine.
You have a lot of quotes about how just a little bit of booze will impair one, but there doesn’t seem to be any linkies so I can evaluate them. Look cops and the various organizations which make money scaring people about drugs and alcohol are always hysterical about the amount that can fatally impair one. But give me some sites. And yes I admit I might have missed it the first time you put it up, but I don’t think so.
Love it when reality bites libertarians back in the ass.
re checkpoints: I think the problem is that they are arbitrary, just like the stop & frisk.
Here in Victoria, Australia, checkpoints are set up so that they stop ALL cars and check alcohol levels of everyone, and not much else. It is a nuisance, but it seems like a fair one, and given the amount of actual, documentedl deaths on the roads (ie, not a security theater), I am willing to give up some of my freedom.
Azkyroth: Neither Mr. Couch nor I are advocating or supporting the harm that comes form criminal activity. Nor does defending the criminally accused ever equate to supporting or advocating the harm that arises from the crimes committed by many of our clients. Dalillama’s criticism was poorly made and Mr Couch is not a liar. My point has been that checkpoints are overreaching and what I believe to be a gross violation of our Constitutional rights. It is not an effective way of preventing drunk driving. It is a very effective way to harass people who are otherwise not committing any crime at all and it’s a great way to raise revenue and harass undocumented immigrants. The list of things wrong with checkpoints far outweighs what potential good they could do.
Azkyroth, I don’t believe I claimed that there was a consensus here on this thread, what I was surprised about was the number of law and order types commenting here. And if I haven’t really insulted you before now, please consider the last two comments an insult.
….there were embedded links in each of the posts containing the quotes. That’s why the “AHEM” and “Here’s” were in different colors.
Also, Jesus Mythical Christ, have you never been drunk before?
This is why I stopped my subscription to the Onion. there’s simply no need.
so is drunk driving. which one is worse in your twisted mind? How would YOU go about catching drunk drivers in a more efficient manner, with very limited resources, than running checkpoints?
I’m sure the police would be all ears if you have the data to support a better method.
what’s that? you don’t?
oh.
Be careful about how much State intrusion you allow, because once you grant it, it’s nearly impossible to take away.
Be careful how many drunk-driving fatalities you allow, because once killed, they’re TOTALLY impossible to bring back. And also because the more people die while the cops do nothing until it’s too late, the less sympathy your talk of constitutional rights will get.
Seriously, dude, we’re not talking about strip-searches or invasive background-checks here; we’re talking about nothing more than the testing of the one personal trait that matters — how drunk the driver is at the time he’s driving. If that’s all the cops focus on at a DUI checkpoint, then it’s a minimal invasion of privacy that could easily save lives.
The alternative to dui checkpoints is saturation patrolling. A hot topic as to which is more effective.
I remember being 18, drunk, but LESS drunk than anyone else in the group, and tasked with driving us home from Magic Mountain (it’s an amusement park with lots of roller coasters) at 12:00am.
…going for the onramp to the freeway, it was noted by the passenger next to me that I was driving in the wrong lane, and an oncoming car was just about to hit us.
only there was a lot more screaming involved.
remember now… I was the LEAST drunk out of the 6 of us.
No, I didn’t drive us home that night. Instead, I drove us to the nearest place to get some sleep. I shouldn’t have even done that much, but we didn’t have cell phones back then to call a cab.
that was the first and last time I ever drove drunk. Not the first or last time any of my friends did though. some cars were lost in various incidents, though thankfully no lives.
people get impaired when they are drunk (half the reason TO drink FFS!), and end up making rather poor decisions. If there had been a checkpoint for drivers leaving Magic Mountain that night, I would likely have peen pissed off about it, but compared to the near calamity that actually happened? I say, bring on the fucking checkpoints and fuck the libertarian asses who haven’t got a clue.
Ok looked and still say they are more fear mongering than real, at least at the lower levels. I’m not sure what the question about whether I’ve ever been drunk before is about. Is it a trick question? Do I lose cred if I haven’t been drunk or if I have?
Although, I’m not sure what those points have to do with the price of tea in China as my mother used to ask. You either are or are not willing to put up with police intrusion into your life at a level that approves stopping everybody or every 5th or 10th body at a check point on the off chance you might find someone doing something that is illegal.
@111
Okay, seriously, stop all these ridiculous arguments. No one here has shown that DUI checkpoints are for catching drunk drivers. People have shown that it’s to harass undocumented immigrants and minorities.
You have to show that first. The whole argument is that DUI checkpoints are not primarily for safety reasons.
Ichthyic: Police already do a pretty damn good job of catching people driving drunk without setting up checkpoints. How would I go about it? The way all criminal activity is monitored; through reports and lawful observation. Checkpoints don’t catch all people who are under the influence; many drugs don’t leave an odor officers often miss signs of drug intoxication, but drugs can cause as much harm as alcohol intoxication. Also, driving while extremely tired is as dangerous as driving drunk, but the checkpoints won’t stop that from happening, because it is not considered illegal to drive while extremely tired. Checkpoints don’t work. So get off of your high horse.
also.. saturation patrolling requires more units. hence, more cost.
it’s a question of whether you actually have experienced how impaired your abilities get when you drink.
experience being the best teacher and all.
LOL no, they don’t. they don’t have anywhere NEAR the manpower to do a good job of controlling drunk driving through patrols, or even checkpoints for that matter.
On what basis?! You really don’t see how memory, attention, ability to track moving objects, and coordination affect safe operation of a vehicle when impaired?!
Your insistence that being drunk does not impair driving is so utterly bizarre that being completely inexperienced with the effects of alcohol…might maybe explain it?
….they are relevant to your assertion that driving with a BAC around the legal “driving drunk” limit is not impaired?
uh, that might be true in Arizona. not so much in the rest of the civilized world.
did you know they do checkpoints in New Zealand? and guess what… it has FUCK ALL to do with catching illegal immigrants?
holy crap, why bother? I’m arguing with the delusional.
go ahead, drink and drive, and when you kill someone, blame them for being in your way.
@122
Okay, have you done any research on this? The ACLU has challenged numerous checkpoints for a variety of reasons. Or check out the link #67.
Please show me that they are primarily for stopping drunk driving. The evidence I found said the opposite. It’s about revenue.
I don’t think the CheckStops in Edmonton have ever caught an illegal alien.
They have caught plenty of drunk drivers, though.
shorter Congaboy:
“I haz a slippery slope argument!!”
yeah, that’s a logical fallacy you got there bud.
please show me a better method.
well?
naw, you can’t, because you really don’t know shit.
Ichthyic: stop straw manning us. But, go ahead, think criminal defense attorneys are delusional; when you get arrested and overcharged, don’t call a defense attorney, do it yourself–you seem to think you know more about the law than we do.
yeah, but you’re talking civilized world again. Doublereed might indeed be entirely accurate that the practice is abused in places like Arizona and Texas.
but that’s like saying corrupt cops exist.
true on the face of it, but then, what would you replace the police force with because you thought 1% of cops were corrupt?
checkpoints work to catch drunk drivers, full stop. that it might be abused to do other things is irrelevant to that point.
if doublereed has a problem with cops abusing the system, perhaps he should be more concerned about the abuse instead.
you don’t even know what that means.
who knows more about the LAW is not fucking at all relevant here.
go chase an ambulance.
doublereed@116:
DUIs aren’t good. A sane level of enforcement is definitely needed and I totally agree that checkpoints per se aren’t this massive trampling of our individuality and belief in personal freedom (now where’d I put my snakeskin jacket…), so I wouldn’t be entirely dismissive of the arguments being made here in favor of DUI checkpoints. They aren’t ridiculous and many have acknowledged that just like anything having to do with cops they can definitely be abused.
Somebody pointed out that a good way to make sure things are done right is to let the Feds have more oversight but OMG who do you think opposes BIG GUBMINT trampling on the states? And also developing our piss-poor public trans system but OMG who do you think opposes BIG GUBMINT public works projects? Nope, much better to run around with an AK-47 and lead inane protests. THAT’S WHAT THE FOUNDERS INTENDED!!!!!
chigau (違う) #125
Same in Vancouver. Our illegal immigrants seem to mostly get busted at ports and airports. BC’s famous drinking driving Counterattack (which has been going on for 35 years) has done a pretty good job of reducing the number of fatalities on the roads due to impairment.
Fuck. Libertarians just love the road argument, don’t they?
Well, no, you don’t “ask” permission. You damn well earn that permission by first demonstrating that you can safely and legally operate a vehicle (because roads are filled with other people), then you pay for the PRIVILEGE of using that vehicle on roads that are paid for by you and everybody else who uses them – including non-drivers, because even non-drivers have places to go. And do you actually not know what licensing and registration fees are used to pay for? Not just to build the roads but to constantly repair them, because cracks and potholes aren’t just caused by tree roots and bad weather – cumulative millions of tonnes of steel rolling up and down a six-inch thick strip of tarmac takes its toll.
And you know what? Those fees and the taxes you probably also object to also pay for the police, firefighters and paramedics who race to the scenes of stupid accidents like the one that almost killed you – you know, the kind of accident that police want to prevent by removing drunken idiots from the road before they do any damage.
If you don’t like this arrangement, feel free to start carving your own roads through your neighbours’ farms and backyards and charging admission and cleaning up after drunken idiots mow down your neighbours’ livestock and kids.
Finally, if you object to some of the things your government uses your money for: welcome to the fucking club. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve railed against my own government here in Oz for their gross mismanagement and misallocation of my money ($250million for a religious-only school chaplain programme? $800million tax rebate to Rupert fucking Murdoch? Billions in subsidies and tax breaks to coal & fracking companies while actively opposing renewable energy (in about the sunniest fucking place on Earth!) and trying to destroy free tertiary education and free healthcare? WTF – I thought you guys were trying to save money!), I’d likely be so well-insulated from reality via my enormous wealth that I wouldn’t even be here complaining on the internet.
If you don’t agree with what your government does with your money: just eat shit. I have to. Everyone does. You don’t want to buy a driver’s license? You want to drive around drunk? Do yourself and everyone a favour and don’t fucking drive.
…of course, it’s not like there’d be any serious technical difficulty in just fitting every car with an ignition interlock or similar…
…in fact, we could probably design an interlock system that’d prevent vehicle operation by the fuckheads who just…sit there…with their mouths open…after the light turns green. And the people who pull away from stoplights at the speed of continental drift, and then spend the next five minutes slowly accelerating to 10mph over the speed limit. Hmm…
Ichthyic:
“you don’t even know what that means.” Do too!
“go chase an ambulance.” well, thanks to sitting here arguing with ignoramuses like you, I’ve missed, like 4 of them going by my office so far.
Random breath tests, aka the booze bus: the Australian version of the DUI checkpoint.
Drive towards checkpoint.
If randomly selected to pull over, do so. If not, drive on.
Blow through a tube, carry on if below the 0.05 limit.
No unnecessary license checks, no abuses of power that I’ve ever heard of.
In the state of Victoria, random breath tests have caught 70,000 over the limit out of 20,000,000 tests in 15 years. That’s a rate of 1 per 285 vehicles, way too high for my liking. Hence, I support ongoing booze bus operations.
Here’s a link to a Feb 2014 study published by the Australian Institute of Criminology on effective ways to prevent drink driving. It does raise the question of whether checkpoints should randomly sample or stop everyone, the key difference between US and Australian checkpoints.
An interesting excerpt on the effectiveness of imprisonment, which I suspect is probably true of many (not all) crimes:
Imprisonment
So much of what people object to in the US seem to be because you don’t trust your police force. You should fix that, yo.
congaboy, Ronald Couch and others sharing their arguments:
You have apparently failed to notice such minor details as the fact that Ichthyic, among other commenters, is not in the U.S. In the place where he resides, the police are considerably less institutionally corrupt (and possibly somewhat less institutionally racist as well), and therefore administer DUI checkpoints properly, to prevent drunk driving. As I noted in my initial comment and you have collectively ignored, the problem with DUI checkpoints being used to shake people down and harass minorities isn’t DUI checkpoints, or policing generally, the problem is that police in the U.S. are deeply institutionally corrupt and racist. You say we should rely on police pulling people over instead, because DUI checkpoints are applied in a racist way, acting as though you’re totally unaware of the ‘crime’ of Driving While Black, and instead pretend that of course the police will be totally colorblind in their actions there as they aren’t at checkpoints.
In order to fix the problem with the police being deeply corrupt, we need a)to actually fund police departments properly our of tax revenues, as suggested by Maureen Brian @86 and practiced by the New Zealand police that Ichthyic mentioned, and b) have some kind of actual oversight of the police, which would also start to help with the racism. The rest of it can be dealt with by training, policy changes, and vigorous enforcement of the latter. Body cameras are also a good idea for both reasons.
You need permission from ME to operate your potentially lethal machine anywhere near me and my family, road or not, and such permission is granted upon your demonstration of qualifications or safely operate that potentially lethal machine, with your license the proof of your competence.
I have agreed to delegate the enforcement of this permission to my government, which acts as my proxy. In the absence of said government, I’m getting a shotgun and will be blowing out your tires if you get within the gun’s range of my home or family.
@Azkyroth:
Interestingly, it’s possible to check this. Praying to Google. . .
[site:https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/ askyroth]
The first hit is this very page. The second hit is:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/07/01/wtf-natgeo/
Amusingly enough, the typing of “Askyroth” by bachfiend @#54, to address you, is in response to you trying to be charitable to Richard Dawkins for making a mistake in science (describing isotopes of carbon):
Heh.
Bachfiend, further down, acknowledges: “I shouldn’t criticize though. I’ve signed my name to reports with blatant typographical errors.”
So — you insist that bachfiend was ALREADY AN ASSHOLE rather than a fallible human who made a typing mistake?
Dalillama@139: Yes. I am definitely in knee-jerk eff the police mode. Ugh…
The amount of unchecked privilege in this thread is approaching nauseating levels.
“Racial gap in U.S. arrest rates: ‘Staggering disparity'” – the vast majority of police departments disproportionately arrest black people.
“How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty” – an example of how municipal violations create a debt trap.
– a black professor’s personal experiences with racial profiling.
If you think driver’s license checkpoints (the subject of the article) or sobriety checkpoints fall equally on people of all races and income levels, you’re willfully ignorant.
In places where it is about revenue, it was deliberately made to be about revenue by people who decided that they’d rather use the revenue as a motivation for police forces to do it instead of just making it standard operational policy and funding it properly through normal revenue streams.
But the reason it was decided that police should be motivated to do it in the first place is because it stops drunk driving.
I’m utterly floored by all the authoritarianism on this board when it comes to drinking and driving.
Drinking and driving is a horrible thing, you shouldn’t do it.
How does that suddenly make the police trustworthy?
qwints
*slow clap* Congratu-fucking-lations. You’ve notices that police in the U.S. are deeply racist and corrupt. I’m amazed. There’s only been what, a couple dozen threads on this very blog in the last few months on that topic, and hundreds on the FtB network, which clearly you’re the only one here to have read. And, of course, no one has mentioned or addressed that in this very thread, not even 4 posts above you, or all the way back up at number 86, or anywhere else in the thread at all.
And for those Candians and Australians thinking they live with magically colorblind police forces:
“Report shows racism in Montreal police ranks”
“Dozens of Australian police officers under investigation over racist emails”
The fact that you trust the police is an example of your privilege, not your enlightened understanding of reality.
qwints @143, see @139.
Perhaps you should examine the privilege that leads you to think that every comment has to be about the United States.
I agree with congaboy – checkpoints are stop-and-frisk for the road. And while driving is certainly a privilege and not a right, it’s also a necessity for many people because of the way we have structured our population geographies and infrastructure (if we had better local and ANY long-distance public transit, that might change). Traffic laws are actually some of the few laws I like – they have among the best liberty-for-safety tradeoff ratios because safe driving requires that everyone on the road follow the rules reasonably well – and I would actually like to see them enforced MUCH more strongly, but with suspicion-based targeted approaches, not with dragnet policing.
@Azkyroth, Further to my 141:
The direct link to the comment that is the second hit:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/07/01/wtf-natgeo/comment-page-1/#comment-383577
The third hit is :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/04/08/sunday-sacrilege-bad-without-god/comment-page-1/#comment-306972
So Louis is ALREADY AN ASSHOLE as well?
Fourth hit:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/06/20/the-threat-of-misandry/comment-page-1/#comment-370466
Tony is expressing sympathy for you in response to an anecdote you told — and he’s ALREADY AN ASSHOLE?
Fifth hit:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/06/21/a-totally-unbelievable-fantasy/comment-page-1/#comment-371072
Louis, again. I guess his ASSHOLE status didn’t change?
Sixth hit:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/09/13/lounge-435/comment-page-2/#comment-695129
Ogvorbis is upset, but it looks like he misunderstood you. Is he still ALREADY AN ASSHOLE?
Seventh hit:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/10/19/lounge-375/comment-page-2/#comment-477679
erikthebassist appears to be in accord with you. But he’s ALREADY AN ASSHOLE, eh?
I think 6 links is the max. Let’s find out.
Amphiox@148 – PZ’s post is about whether a libertarian should be mocked for protesting a checkpoint in Arlington, Texas. PZ and many commenters have taken the position that it’s “a minor nuisance” justified by the danger of drunk drivers. Several people, including myself, found that position somewhat shocking given that PZ has extensively covered reasons we can’t trust police in the US and posted evidence that the checkpoints in question are heavily used to target marginalized groups. Saying that it’s different in other countries is irrelevant to whether the protester was having a stopped clock moment.
It isn’t nice to laugh at libertarians. The majority of them suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder:
So the next time you feel yourself tempted to mock a libertarian, remember that he is an emotional cripple, impaired with a personality disorder which leaves him powerless to do anything but argue all day with strangers on the internet. See also Reason.com.
Kizone Kaprow
On this post it’s being assumed that legal enforcement is the best way to reduce drunk driving. Some legal enforcement is, of course, required. But prohibition alone rarely works: once you’ve got the population agreed that the behaviour is reprehensible (which has generally happened in North America), you still need to provide ways to avoid it.
In the case of drunk driving, that would be things like making it normal to have a designated driver (mostly been done, but nobody wants to be it), making it normal (and convenient) to call a cab (but that’s expensive), and providing free rides for people who find themselves to have drunk too much (e.g. operation Red Nose in Quebec).
Even better, let’s reduce car culture: provide buses and bike paths and walkable neighbourhoods. Driving is dangerous. Drinking exacerbates that, as much as phone calls and fatigue do — and texting is even worse — but even fully aware drivers crash their cars and run over people, not to mention that they have bad health, destroy the environment, and cause wars in oil-producing areas. So… how about let’s reduce driving?
@Azkyroth:
Only a couple more to go:
Eighth hit:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/06/07/atheism-should-be-science-and-social-justice-not-science-vs-social-justice/comment-page-1/#comment-357554
Louis, again. And he’s agreeing with you! But typing your name wrong still makes him ALREADY AN ASSHOLE, according to you, because . . . reasons!
Ninth hit:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2014/02/04/who-you-believe-says-a-lot-about-who-you-are/comment-page-1/#comment-748703
Ogvorbis, again. Agreeing with you and apologizing for a different typing mistake. But still ALREADY AN ASSHOLE, by your claim, for this particular typing mistake.
Signed, Owlmirror (who has sometimes been addressed as Owlmirrow, and manages not to attribute malice to typos).
Huh. Apparently the people who aren’t being smarmy little shits don’t stick in my mind.
That said, what you’re doing is a fairly disgusting violation of boundaries. Don’t we have explicit policies against this sort of thing?
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST YOU PIECE OF DOG SHIT IM SORRY FOR BEING HUMAN AND HVING A HUMAN MEMORY SHOULD I JUST GO SLIT MY FUCKIGN WRISTS
The way PZ worded it definitely raised my hackles, but I think that has more to do with the news lately (hey look what just happened right now!) than it does with any real failure to check his privilege. I think Dalillama has it right @139. It’s not about the checkpoints. It’s about fixing our fucked up justice system. Death or dismemberment at the hands of a drunk driver is on the whole of it probably a lot worse than being racially profiled (yes, it made me a little nauseous to type that), and you ain’t exactly doing much about racial profiling by shifting it from a checkpoint to a patrol car.
Owlmirror
Fucking hell, what’s gotten up your ass?
qwints 151
But he wasn’t; he was arguing that not just DUI checkpoints but DUI laws generally are intrinsically invalid, which is the claim that people are arguing against. The fact that the U.S police are deeply corrupt doesn’t make his position any better supported. It is a separate problem, unrelated to the question of whether such checkpoints are efficacious in reducing drunk driving. The corruption and racism, (which is a more widespread problem and exists even in less corrupt police forces, and in fact needs to be addressed society-wide not just in police forces) are huge problems that desperately need to be addressed, and no one’s saying otherwise. That does not address the question of what policies, given the physical infrastructure as it currently exists, best minimize the number of people on the roads who pose a (more than usually) active danger to others. Those arguing that DUI checkpoints do, in fact, reduce the number of intoxicated drivers on the roads appear to have the numbers on their side here.
numerobis#153
Hmm, you mean like I suggested all the way back in my first post on this thread @#98? Otherwise, see my response to qwints directly above.
I’m no libertarian but I am against checkpoints. Stats show it is rare that a drunk driver is found this way. Roving patrols are much more effective.
There is just something about stopping everyone to be searched with no probable cause that seems like a really bad idea.
re @138:
The bolded words triggered my memory. Here in Taxachusetts, there’d be DUI checkpoints on many highways, every Friday and Saturday Night (not to mention New Year’s Eve!!). They used to be the “random” kind, where cars at random would be signaled to stop for a Breathalyzer check. Then, it was ruled, by some court, that random checks were not random enough, and used to pull over known cars just to harass the driver. The only alternative was for the DUI checkpoints to be roadblocks, where every driver would be breathalyzed. And the News would always announce exactly where the roadblocks were so all the drunkards could easily avoid them. Excuse me for not completing this anecdote, I just stopped following it…. ;-(
Still, I’m stuck on the “random” aspect; could be so easily abused…
qwints
Those telepathic messages you are getting about what I think are in error.
Dalillama @ 136: The reason it is better that we make cops pull people over, rather than use checkpoints, is because they need RAS and/or PC. When they conduct a pretextual stop (the name for stopping people for bogus reasons), we then can attack the stop to determine whether it was lawful. Thus, we weed out the truly bad stops. Stop talking about shit for which you have no fucking clue. Criminal law is what I do. You really don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.
Owlmirror
Step away from the keyboard.
Dalilama@158: apologies for not noticing the point you made obtusely in the middle of the long post. A point I’d made obtusely much earlier myself. It hadn’t gotten picked up in the discussion, so I figured I’d go at it more clearly.
And those arguing that DUI checkpoints do, in fact, target minorities and get abused also appear to have the numbers on their side. One doesn’t invalidate the other.
Owlminnow is now already an asshole. :(
I would think that googling to fact-check somebody’s reported memories is not a violation, or not a violation of anything worth worrying about, especially when it concerns something not-so-terribly-Earth-shaking as spelling discrepancies. But maybe google should be responsible for wiping the internet clean every few days, just to make sure things don’t get so out of hand. *eyeroll*
Essentially the courts feel if the policeman can make the decision, it can be based on something else, especially if minorities are involved. So, to skip that shit, they must use more arbitrary method, like each car, or every fifth car. I gather a script that is followed, like check two cars, let five through, check one, let ten through, start over, would be permissible.
From what I have read, I like the idea of saturation policing over checkpoints. But a lot of folks like checkpoints since it is security theater, like airport security. Makes them think something is being done, never mind the real results.
But Dalillama makes a great point. DUIs are bad. They aren’t going away. They need to be policed to prevent deaths, injury, property damage, etc. But how do you do that? Checkpoints appear to be effective. Yes, but what about the crap that I and others pointed out? OK, so what do you do? Get rid of checkpoints in favor patrols! But guess what, all that crap that happened at the checkpoints? It’ll just happen out on the road anyway. The cops here in the States aren’t magically going to stop being assholes just because you took away their checkpoints. If checkpoints really are an effective method of enforcement all that has changed is that you’ve very possibly allowed more drunks to get away with DUIs WHILE doing nothing to stop the cops from being assholes.
Saturation can also deal with other causes of bad driving, and it can deal with speeding. If you go by a checkpoint, and you see that half the PD is there, woohoo, time to go home at 100 mph!
(There was a time when I would have thought that way. Luckily, at that time, my car was too wimpy to follow through. I can’t believe I made it to 21 alive, never mind that I never crashed nor caused a crash.)
I’m genuinely surprised at the amount of support for DUI checkpoints here. I would have imagined most people here would understand that even completely law abiding citizens would want to do their utmost to limit contact with police, and obeying the law on a public road doesn’t really seem to meet a minimum criteria for provoking a contact which, as established tragically, can end fatally for the citizen for the crime of not showing sufficient deference to the officer.
The fact that these screens often are used for collecting people with outstanding warrants and undocumented people doesn’t help matters. I realize “has outstanding warrants” doesn’t sound particularly sympathetic, but when you fail to show up to court for your bullshit jaywalking citation or a whole host of other completely normal behaviors, surprise, they issue a bench warrant. If you do show up, but can’t pay the fee they assign you for court costs and criminal fines, they issue a bench warrant. This has done some truly ugly things and is a not-small factor in the situation in Ferguson.
If they were actually about nothing but public safety, as asserted by defenders, they shouldn’t be able to ask for ID. They shouldn’t require proof of insurance, or do any kind of check on the person or vehicle. Blow and go, only following up with IDs and such if you have someone registering as intoxicated.
Stopping drunk driving is a noble cause and I fully support it. But just because something is done in the name of a good goal does not make any action taken justifiable. That any of us here individually find it onerous or not isn’t the point. I think most of us have a vivid enough imagination to picture a scenario that begins “have you had any drinks tonight?” “No.” “That’s no SIR to you. Step out of the vehicle.” and understand why people might object to interacting with the police.
Gah. Obviously drinking and driving should be illegal, but checkpoints are such a bad idea. At least when they do Roadside Safety Checks, they can visibly see if you’re wearing a seatbelt or not when they decide to stop you or not. What does “reasonable expectation of privacy” mean if it’s not enforced? It’s that much better because everyone’s privacy is invaded? Well, the NSA is spying on pretty much everyone, it seems, so is that okay? If you’re not guilty you’ve got nothing to hide? I’m not okay with that, and I think it’s bad public policy. I think the answer is yes, we should have to wait until an officer or other person observes something wrong before a cop has the right to make a stop.
(This is from someone who both prosecutes and defends DUI charges, FWIW).
@Qwints #147
Ah, so an organisation of 50,000 has a few dozen people caught sending around inappropriate emails. Excuse me while I retire to the fainting couch and reconsider my opinion of all Australian police.
Police forces everywhere have flawed people in them, and Australia certainly has a history of crooked/abusive cops. That’s not in dispute here. However, I provided some data:
Victorian police have stopped 20 million drivers to give them random breath tests in the last 15 years. This is a matter of public record.
Can you provide any evidence that my opinion of their professionalism in conducting RBTs is only based on my privilege, rather, than, say, reality?
@karpad #169
Oh, look. How it’s done in other countries, hence people in this thread voicing support for checkpoints.
This thread is refreshing my decision to never again set foot in the USA.
Gotta love the multiple logical fallacies in this post. But, if you wanted to be logically consistent you’d be agreeing with the “idiot” not mocking him.
Why don’t they read the comments before making their own comment?
Explain with evidence please….
Please don’t say “third party evidence”.
please
Nerd of Redhead etc.:
“‘If someone goes out to eat and has a few drinks, drives home and is responsible in doing so. Nobody is hurt, no property was damaged, there is no crime.’
So drink yourself into a half-blind stupor, get into your car, weave all over the road, and the police should just step back and watch until you run over a little old lady trying to cross the road…then they can arrest you. Not before.”
As the “idiot” points out, no one is hurt in his scenario, thus, no crime should be considered to be committed. Our friend the author then goes on to attribute to the “idiot” a position he never took. Namely, that one ought to be able to get “blind drunk” and suffer no consequences. Many people hold the same view as this libertarian; that drunk driving is covered by reckless driving laws and is therefore redundant. He never said the police should ignore reckless driving.
Finally, if you believe I need permission to operate my property, it is on you to defend that position.
Tone it down NOW, everybody, or this thread will be closed.
Luke Anthony @178
“Many people” who are these people and why should I care what they think? Just to be clear, are you advocating that drunk driving should not per se be illegal? Reckless driving is a very different offense in the jurisdiction in which I practice law, and it very well should be.
“Tone it down NOW, everybody, or this thread will be closed.”
Says the man calling people idiots and mocking their near deadly accident.
Luke Anthony #178:
Does this apply also to, say, the brakes? "Well, officer, I haven't had to do an emergency stop, and they're fine for slowing down gradually…"
Portia:
Precisely, drunk driving is not per se reckless and could quite eaily be covered under reckless driving laws. For example, weaving is already covered as is excessive speed. Drunk driving may cause such behavior, even increase its likelihood, but it does not necessarily make one’s driving reckless.
@Azkyroth:
Threats of self-harm was absolutely not the reaction I was trying to provoke, nor expecting.
Given that every single instance I could find on Pharyngula seemed to be an innocuous typo by people conversing with you, it seemed more and more likely that the actual intent of the absolute statement @#102 was that you really do think that every one who made the typo was an asshole, but you just didn’t mention it at the time. I figured you would either triple down and acknowledge that you do think that, or (maybe) acknowledge that your original contention was wrong.
I have no idea what you meant by “violation of boundaries”.
@conshusnuss razer:
We all have our
crossesanuses (asterisks?) to bear.Daz:
Sure, last I checked cops were not making random brake health stops either. So they must agree with me.
Luke Anthony:
What you are advocating is a law that is unconstitutionally vague. “I know [unsafe driving] when I see it.” My point being, no, reckless driving does not “cover” those other offenses, nor should it. For reference, this is how Illinois law defines reckless driving:
That mental state, willful or wanton, is a really high bar. I don’t want to have to prove that for when someone misjudges the distance of another vehicle and pulls across their lane when they shouldn’t. It’s ridiculous to suggest.
Hm, I guess you think willful and wanton disregard is a less vague definition than weaving and speeding. Agree to disagree I guess. I know in my state 25 above the limit is automatically considered reckless. Also, I know weaving can be considered cause for reckless citations. That is why I used them as examples.
Luke Anthony:
Not to mention that vague laws make for arbitrary enforcement. Which you seem to think is bad. So. What about it?
Portia:
Your example of reckless driving statute is already vague. Do you mean to imply you do not think arbitrary enforcement is bad? I would think a clearly written law would include examples of specific behavior which is considered reckless. Terms like wanton disregard and even willful are vague.
Luke Anthony at 187
I’m going to need you to clarify/extrapolate because I don’t understand your point. I can google for you what constitutes “willful and wanton” and where it falls in relation to other mental states, but I don’t really feel like going to the effort of giving you a lesson in it. So, if you’re interested in it, you can google it. You can agree to disagree if you’d like to, but I still think your arguments thus far are ridiculous.
Luke Anthony @189
That’s what case law is for.
Portia:
A law that asks the cops to delve into your mental state is not clear. The way cops determine the wantonness or willfulness is the behavior of the driver e.g. excessive speed and swerving etc. I know that laws have definitions for terms such as wanton and willful, that does not make them clear.
Portia:
Sure, case law is for clarifying vague terms, I know. However, being legally drunk is not, on its own, dangerous. So why do we need a law to cover it rather than covering only the reckless behavior which drunk driving often leads to? I would be fine with drunkenness leading to intensifiers of reckless driving penalties.
Luke Anthony #185:
When you get behind that wheel you become part of a system—a moving vehicle—which it is your duty under law to keep in good condition as regards safety. Driving whilst having knowingly made yourself unable to properly control the vehicle is as dangerous and antisocial as knowingly driving with defective brakes. That you may be lucky enough not to harm others by your stupidity is purely a matter of chance.
Luke Anthony @181:
Actually, that would be “says the host of this blog“. There’s nothing wrong with calling Watkins an idiot bc he is one. From his Facebook post (linked in the OP):
He doesn’t support drunk driving, but opposes a law against it. Which means he thinks people should be free to drink X amount of alcohol and go driving.
Except if they are on PUBLIC roads, they potentially endanger everybody on the road. Like carrying a loaded weapon in PUBLIC. Intrinsically unsafe. Prove otherwise with a citation.
What part of PUBLIC don’t you understand?
Citation required. But it is intrinsically unsafe. To both the person, and those around them…
Which if he stayed home, and didn’t be an asshole, wouldn’t have ever happened…..
Citation mother fucking needed. Why only opinions? Why not evidence your claims? Or like all liberturds, all you have is opinions, but no evidence?
And a BOC over 0.08 is considered impaired (evidence), so your problem is?????
Daz:
It is your responsibility to prove that I made it home safe by chance, not mine.
Luke Anthony #197:
Wrong, dumbfuck. It is my right as a co-owner of that road, to be protected from utter prats who think they are qualified and able, whilst under the influence of a mind-altering drug, to assess their own ability to safely hurl large lumps of metal along it at speeds high enough to kill or maim me.
Suido@171
Google results suggest Australia’s mobile RBT allows police to stop anyone at any time for a breath test. I was unable to locate any systemic analysis of whether they are administered in a racially biased manner, but here’s some more evidence of racism among Australian police.
No one should be stopped by police just because they’re black – Flemington and North Melbourne – “The results showed young African people were about two-and-a-half times more likely to be subject to an arbitrary ”stop and search” relative to their numbers in the area.”
The banality of police racism – a muslim writer’s experience of racism in Australia
No, it is YOUR responsibility to demonstrate with evidence that you don’t endanger anybody else on a PUBLIC highway. Since your vehicle in intrinsically unsafe, you must provide evidence from the condition of the car, the licensing, registration, insurance, and any safety/environmental permits that apply, and your own condition, based on the laws, and MY, not your opinion, is safe for the vehicle to be operated with a minimum of danger to the PUBLIC.
Whoever has this responsibility, they won’t have a hard time demonstrating that your chances of getting home safely decrease as a result of being intoxicated. Thus, there are such chances. Q.E.D. They also get lower, in this case. If probabilities had nothing to do with it, then we’d be living in some kind of bizarre fantasy world where statistics doesn’t exist, or where we’re all figments of your imagination or something like that.
@qwints #199
Allow me to quote myself:
I accept there’s more potential for abuse when it’s simply a couple of cops in a squad car pulling someone over for an RBT. I’ve had that happen, most recently during the last Christmas period, late at night. Given that I wouldn’t want to be the cop that deals with a grieving family after car crash at that time of year, I fully support a more overt presence and more random stops on targeted nights.
If you can find evidence that booze bus operations, set up on a busy road and randomly sampling the drivers going past is somehow racist, I look forward to reconsidering my opinion of Australian booze buses. Until then…
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/20487559/drink-drivers-blow-booze-bus-test/
Dalillama @ 139—Actually, improper stops and searches are conducted against Aboriginal folks in Canada, as well. Racism isn’t just an American phenomenon. (see Qwuit’s links)
Askyroth @ 136—The problem with making interlock systems mandatory on all cars is that interlock systems fail an awful lot. I’ve a friend who works for one of the interlock companies and he says that they have a high rate of false positives and that interlocks can only be ‘released’ by the company that owns the lock, which means they can charge whatever they want to fix it and that the car is non-operational until they release it. I’d be all for mandatory use of such a device, but only if the testy nature of the device was fixed first. (Better yet, bring on the robot-operated cars!)
Really, this debate seems to be about where people draw the line between personal freedom and public good. I typically fall on the side of public good, but not in this instance. I don’t believe that there is enough evidence that the benefit to the public is all that great—especially when “budget concerns” seem to be the main reason that checkpoints are used rather than saturation methods. And second, I am totally against DUI checkpoints because I’ve seen them abused, yes even in the liberal bastion of Seattle. My brother-in-law, who is an undocumented person, lives in fear of being caught out in the typical holiday DUI checkpoints. I know a lot of my black students do, too. Not because they will be drinking and driving, but because such stops are almost always a pretext. It is all well and good to say then, “Well, do something about the racism in your police force then!” but the reality is that you can’t always ferret out bad ideas/attitudes; a lot of the time the best you can do is change practices that seem to target minorities unfairly so as to protect them.
To be clear, I do not believe that driving drunk is morally permissible or good or anything like that. I think people who drive drunk are thoughtless assholes and that they should be prosecuted. However, I think that I should be stopped and checked out if I’m engaging in behavior that leads one to believe that I’m doing something wrong, not as a matter of course. Not because I’m a libertarian (far from it!) but because I don’t believe that the police should have the power to do that to me or anyone in the name of public safety—not when the benefit to the public is so outweighed by other factors (the PD’s bottom line, racism and police brutality, etc.)
Luke Anthony:
Ok…nearly every goddamn crime on the books in the US legal system requires proof of mental state. (Crimes that do not: statutory rape, for example, doesn’t matter if you knew the person was underage). You don’t know the first thing about what you’re talking about.
Also, in the interest of fairness, in WA state in 1988 our state Supreme Court seemed to rule against DUI checkpoints. However, I have been stopped at least once on 1-5 between Seattle/Everett near New Years for a “safety checkpoint,” which pretty much amounts to the same thing. But it isn’t frequently done here. Rather, cops here do “pretextural” stops, which is why our police dept was investigated by the DOJ (That’s a whole other can of worms! Seattle PD is suing the federal govt for making them comply with anti-brutality policies put in place after the DOJ investigation and it’s ugly. I live in a neighborhood with a high concentration of POC, so I see pretextural stops a whole lot, along with Seattle PD generally harassing folks of color. Seattle’s a great city…if you’re white.)
Luke Anthony @178:
I know I wasn’t part of that conversation, but that certainly wouldn’t be my position.
If you’re operating your property on your property, go your hardest. Go ahead and get wasted and hurl a busted old farm jalopy around the paddocks & scrub as fast as you like. That’s how I learned to drive as a pre-adolescent in the ’80s (except for the wasted part).
But a public road is public property. Your right to operate your property in any way you like ends where the road begins. A driver’s license is a contract between you and the state that says, in part: “In return for the state granting me the right to operate vehicles on public roads, I agree to abide by the rules of public road use on penalty of (including but not limited to) financial imposition or forfeiting my right to said usage.”
If a someone enters into this agreement and then complains if they’re caught and are penalised for breaking one or more of its conditions, I’m afraid I have no sympathy for them. Just as I’ve expected no sympathy when I’ve been fined for (very occasionally) exceeding the speed limit and just as I have no sympathy for the twit in the OP who’s complaining about being fined for driving unlicensed (and what kind of eejit goes to be a PITA for the cops when he’s driving around without a license in the first place?). He’s goddamned lucky they didn’t have to scrape him off the freeway after that drunk hit him, so he should view that $300 ticket (or whatever it was) and a smashed car as a small price to pay to still be in one piece.
@Cyranothe2nd #205
FYI: pretextual
suido–thank you. I really can’t seem to spell today 9__9
Nerd:
Except if they are on PUBLIC roads, they potentially endanger everybody on the road. Like carrying a loaded weapon in PUBLIC. Intrinsically unsafe. Prove otherwise with a citation.
Poor example as we allow people to carry loaded weapons every day in every state. Also, every time a drunk makes it home safe, your point is disproved.
What part of PUBLIC don’t you understand?
The part where my vehicle is your property.
Citation required. But it is intrinsically unsafe. To both the person, and those around them…
See above
Which if he stayed home, and didn’t be an asshole, wouldn’t have ever happened…..
There goes the point WAY above your head.
Citation mother fucking needed. Why only opinions? Why not evidence your claims? Or like all liberturds, all you have is opinions, but no evidence?
Again, see above.
And a BOC over 0.08 is considered impaired (evidence), so your problem is?????
So, you think referencing the law I disagree with has anything to do with whether it could be covered under reckless driving.
Every time any of us is on the public highway (as if I am less part of the public than you) we present a danger to others.
Daz:
Already with the hostility? You sound foolish calling people names over an argument on the internet.
Clearly, a person with such poor emotional control is a danger to others. Please refrain from using our shared resources comrade.
Portia:
For some reason you think I do not understand your point. We merely disagree as to whether the danger of drunk driving is sufficiently covered under the concept of reckless driving. That is really the extent of my argument. Driving drunk MAY be dangerous, but it is not inherently dangerous.
Hank:
Libertarians do not believe in public property.
Luke Anthony:
And what a fantastic idea that is. *barf*
This is incoherent. The potential doesn’t get disproved. Neither does the risk.
So is this claim disproved whenever any of us are on public highways and make it home safe? Or are you now suddenly aware of simple concepts like potential and risk? If you get to have it both ways, do I as well?
Also, if you don’t know about the <blockquote></blockquote>, I figure you’ve probably heard about good old-fashioned quotation marks like this: “”. It won’t improve your thinking, though.
Define the word “inherently.”
Consciousness razor:
You do not believe in armed police forces I take it.
Driving drunk is not obviously dangerous unless someone is exhibiting other obviously dangerous behaviors. If I have had a few drinks, but am still driving according to other rules of the road, what reason does a cop have to pull me over? This is why I disagree with the law, there is no probable cause and it is subject to the whims of cops. You know, the guys who like to choke people to death for selling cigarettes, or shoot 12 yr olds for holding toy guns.
Sometimes I am too lazy for html or quotation marks. It’s the internet and I’ll do what I want.
Luke Anthony
Since you are so smart, try doing this.
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
It makes comments with quotes easier to read.
It will do nothing for the content.
consciousness razor:
This is the internet age, feel free to google the word inherently on your own.
chigau:
If you were paying attention you would know I have already been criticized for my poor internet etiquette. As the target of name calling and cursing already, I am not too concerned with your critique of my style. However, I may use the blockquote tag in the future if I feel so inclined.
Or maybe you need to do something even more bizarre: define “dangerous.”
If you play a round of Russian roulette and survive, does that not count as “dangerous”?
Luke Anthony
This isn’t “the internet”. This is a private blog.
Are you sure you want to take that attitude?
chigau:
Feel free to contact a moderator. If censured, I may change. If banned, it’s the internet, I can comment elsewhere.
consciousness razor:
I will continue to leave the googling of word definitions to you. Have at it.
Oh, sure, I’ll just google it. I was obviously asking because I needed your help. Thanks anyway, dumbass.
Luke Anthony:
Do you think driving a car while wearing a helmet that delays and inhibits sensory perceptions would be inherently dangerous?
How about driving a car with a blindfold on?
This is my little piece of the internet, and I’ll do what I want. Banned.
Squidly Overlord:
Thank you for saving my head and my desk from each other.
Now *that* is a museum-quality example of the assholitarian ethos.
Luke Anthony
There are no moderators.
There is only PZ.
There can be only one.
Bah, I really wanted to see how he justified blindfolded driving or russian roulette as not inherently dangerous.
This needs to displayed prominently somewhere for freeze peach libertarians to ponder.
Suido:
He wouldn’t have justified it; he had already refused to follow any point to its logical conclusion.
@ Portia:
A minor quibble: This is true for charging and conviction; not nearly as applicable to police detaining and/or arresting you. Or at least, shouldn’t be. Some rather obvious exceptions spring to mind. But that’s rather less determining intent than abused officer discretion.
Please don’t misread this comment as endorsing Luke Anthony’s ramblings. I’ve got a lot of work to do, and I can’t afford the loss of brain cells. Plus, I’m too busy laughing at the idea of a cop letting someone who just blew a 0.10 drive home with a “well, as long as you think you can make it home without killing anybody”. Or a DUI charge being dismissed because of the argument “Your Honor, it’s up to the prosecution to prove that I wouldn’t have caused harm to life or property due to my own recklessness.”.
Gotta love the communists. Calling someone a dumbfuck? Cool. Be a jerk about blockquotes? Get banned.
I bet Luke Anthony will try to come back.
shit
That was quick.
If you actually think you were banned due to the blockquotes, you are to stupid to be on the internet.
Why, chigau, you seem positively oracular.
PatrickG;
Point well taken. I think that twiddlewit and I were talking a bit past each other. He moved the goalposts on me a bit and I’m not great at written arguments. I prefer to have a table to bang my fist on ^_^
Danger is relative, but then, as a liberturd, your opinion of how dangerous you are to others is diminished by your egotism and idiocy. Last for the banned troll.
I’ve been trying to google all sorts of crazy shit, but I can’t find an appropriate translator for Glibertarianese. I guess I’ll just keep on cracking for a while, but a little help, anyone?
Portia:
Wasn’t trying to move goalposts, but I sometimes get caught up in my own thinking and become less clear than I like. Getting called a dumbfuck will do that to me. Getting banned for being a bit of a dick was funny tho.
Gotta love the entitled fuckwits who don’t follow their own promises and fuck off after being banned. Instead, sockpuppets ahoy!
Suido:
Isn’t a sockpuppet more of a pseudonymous situation? I have more than one social media account with which to log in to blogs. I never promised to leave, merely mentioned it was a possibility.
Clean up in aisle 234.
Luke Anthony, #221
Thirteen minutes later…
Luke #234
Double whammy. Tone trolling plus failure to deliver on flounce.
Sockpuppet account. How original. Trolls never try that.
Portia:
Are you saying it is not interesting that my being called nasty names is cool, but saying I may or may not use block quotes is not? Or that it makes sense to call someone entitled when they specifically mentioned the site owner’s right to ban him?
Sockpuppet accounts are expressly against the commenting rules on this blog.
toska:
Is it a sockpuppet if I am admitting to being the same person? Maybe I am confused about the term sockpuppet.
By my count, you’ve broken at least 5 rules, 4 of them bannable. One of them being that you are disregarding a ban. Why bother sticking around?
toska:
Oh shit toska, are you gonna have the cops come bust me for violating the terms of service of a website? I hope we have not reached that level.
Suido:
Shits? Giggles? I like arguing on the internet. I love how the object of abuse is the one who gets banned tho.
Yes. You were told to leave. So do it. Do you act this way offline? Someone tells you to leave their house, and you come back in just to grace them with your unwanted presence?
While your briefly here, please tell: do you think driving while blindfolded is an inherently dangerous activity?
toska:
I really only came to comment on the ridiculous nature of the ban.
Further evidence that libertarianism and immaturity go hand in hand. You’re doing libertarianism a real solid, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Who’s a good little libertarian? You are, oh yes, you are a good little libertarian.
bwahahahahahahagahaaa
Suido:
As I said to Portia, I got a bit caught up in my own point and argued past where I wanted to. Driving blindfolded is an obvious impairment. Driving with a couple drinks in your system is not. I think people should be pulled over and cited only when there is clear cause. If I am driving along, apparently safely, the cops should not be checking me out. They need to have a reason to suspect I am drunk other than the fact that it is late at night on a popular stretch of road near some bars.
You must be such a delight.
Suido: It’s the internet, I, as many others on this board, am more of a jerk online than in reality. I think it is the nature of anonymity.
Chigau:
If I called one of you commenters a dumbfuck or fuckwit would you consider my language abusive? What is the user agreement regarding abusive language? Is it worse to call someone names over a disagreement or to state that you may not be willing to use blockquotes?
toska:
It was obvious to me that the ridiculousness would be lost on some, such as yourself. I felt it was incumbent upon me to point it out for you.
Luke 257
(against my better judgment…)
You’re conflating two points, and I don’t know what your justification is for the second.
1. Checkpoints should not be allowed, cops should only be able to stop drivers for observed infractions.
2. Drunk driving should not be illegal by itself without other dangerous behaviors.
I agree with you on the first point. You have provided no rationale for the second point.
Levar Edward Jones, shot by a cop while reaching for his drivers’ license after the cop asked for it. The motorist was pulled over for a seatbelt violation. South Carolina.
The motorist was black, not libertarian.
@ Portia:
It’s hard to find ASCII tables for you to bang on. Would you settle for some table-flipping instead?
┻━┻︵ \(°□°)/ ︵ ┻━┻
:)
Hence why many jurisdictions have acceptable levels of intoxication.
However, profiling and targeted policing are an essential part of law enforcement for a large community. The trick is to profile and target by ACTUALLY RELEVANT factors. Like being a young male*, driving late at night, near some bars. That’s definitely worth a random breath test any day of the week and twice on Fri/Sat nights.
*I don’t know your age, though I’m pretty sure of your gender. I choose this young and male as they are the highest risk demographics for involvement in drink driving fatalities.
Portia:
Yes, I did end up conflating those points, it was not my intention to do so.
I think drunk driving should be an intensifier when observable infractions occur. This is what led me down the path of saying that drunk driving is not always dangerous. I meant this merely to point out that some people may violate the law on drunkenness, but never present an actual safety risk, merely a potential safety risk. Checking for potential risks leads to unacceptable enforcement.
Laws against drunk driving lead to checkpoints. How can you support one but not the other?
Suido:
Ah, so I take it you are a fan of stop and frisk as well?
Luke
No I do not consider name-calling to be abuse.
Did you read the Pharyngula commenting rules?
PatrickG:
Thank you! Consider them flipped!
(Caveat, I am not good at quickly written arguments. If I have a week to revise, I’m great! ;))
Luke:
Give it up already. You just conceded that drunk driving exacerbates driving infractions and should be considered against someone who has done something to merit an investigative stop. You think drunk(impaired by alcohol) driving should be criminalized. It doesn’t necessitate checkpoints to criminal drunk driving. False dichotomy. Stahp.
chigau:
Nope, I do not usually consider terms of service to be worth reading. I suppose I am at risk of becoming part of the human cent-iPad, but so far I have been lucky.
Oh dear. I am clearly a person with poor emotional control because I called someone a rude name. Mind, this from a person who's selfish enough to think being told not to endanger other people is an infringement of their liberty and stupid enough to think that a mind-altering substance doesn't impair their own judgement.
Imagine my tears…
I would ask for better trolls, but maybe this is the quality of troll this thread deserves.
Portia:
We have checkpoints because drunkenness on its own is illegal. Just as we have seat belt checkpoints now that they are illegal on their own. If drunkenness were merely an intensifier, we would not need checkpoints to enforce it. And I already admitted I got myself further down the road than I wanted with the danger aspect of drunk driving.
If you’re already further down the road than you wanted, stop barreling forward.
Daz:
Being stopped at random with no probable cause is an infringement on my liberty. Drunk driving laws, as they are currently written, are a cause of this infringement. And yes, people who resort to name calling are lacking emotional control.
Portia:
I did, I stopped claiming drunkenness was not dangerous as that position was further than I intended.
Do you understand that people fucking die because of drunk driving? Having “emotional control” in this case means precisely that we should be angry with shit-stirring, coercive, irresponsible, entitled and incoherent fuckwit trolls like you who get in the fucking way of making any progress about that.
consciousness razor:
Funny to be calling a libertarian coercive. Do you know what that word means? Our current drunk driving laws lead to abuses. Simple changes, such adding drunkenness into reckless driving definitions would reduce police abuses. I thought liberals used to be about reducing police abuse.
The Talking Deadhead:
Drunkenness on its own isn’t illegal, though. Otherwise cops would camp out in bars and break the handcuffs as soon as they saw someone sway.
Also: your “logic” here doesn’t make any sense.
Any law is an infringement on your liberty. Any safety measure is an infringement on your liberty. Welcome to civilization.
It wasn’t a joke.
Do libertarians not own mirrors? Was there some kind of sacred rule like that in Altas Shrugged or some shit?
Google it.
Luke
lolwut? How would that change anything? Show your fucking work.
Luke:
You haven’t exhibited a coherent enough understanding of DUI and reckless driving laws to be proposing significant changes thereto. Your proposed solutions are nonsensical and would result in more stringent infringements on liberty than those that currently rustle your jimmies.
anteprepro:
I define liberty to exclude behavior which violates the rights of others. So not all laws violate liberty. And yes, safety regs are inherently anti-liberty.
We were specifically discussing drunkenness re: driving. I assumed people knew that at this point in the thread.
Portia:
I would certainly be interested to know how checking BAC after another infraction is observed would limit freedom more than random stops. I am well aware of DUI laws and reckless driving laws, thanks.
Luke #274:
When did our particular segment of this thread become about 'no probable cause'? We were discussing your claim that you should be allowed to drive 'blind drunk' if you so wish. That you feel it perfectly defensible to risk the safety of every other road user on your own, drink-impaired assessment of your ability to control a moving vehicle.
Tell you what, I'll cease calling you names when you stop claiming the right to endanger others' lives 'cause lemonade or coke is too difficult to order.
anteprepro:
Requiring the cops to have probable cause before pulling you over is an improvement.
consciousness razor:
I think I remember “thou shalt not reflect upon thyself”, but I also seem to remember a Good Character masturbating to themselves while looking in a gold-plated mirror and using a roll of 100 dollar bills as a butt plug, so I may need to get a Sophisticated Libertarianologist on the case to teach us the True Meaning.
Ah, liberturds are their own worst enemy. The more they talk, the more they show their moral bankruptcy, their idiotology without evidence, which amounts to a religion, and their lack of empathy for the common good. We don’t have to do anything to show your bad qualities. Your own words and arrogant attitudes demonstrate to the world your lack of character, intelligence, and learning.
Daz:
We were discussing no such thing. The texan in the post said he ought to be able to have a drink or 2 at dinner and I defended that position. I got further down that line of thought than I ought to have. I don’t believe in positive rights friend. I actually did not say it is ok to drive drunk, only that DUI laws on their own are infringements on liberty since they lead to such checkpoints.
Nope, because the incidence of pedestrians causing accidental deaths and property damage is too low to warrant it.
Unlike car drivers.
Situational factors, how do they fucking work?
Nerd:
Please provide a definition for “common good” good luck.
Suido:
I guess I was wrong.
Nerd:
What color are those boots you’ve been licking?
Luke #282
Right. So driving while drunk being a perfect example.
When you say shit that stupid, you can’t possibly expect to not be called names, can you, dumbfuck?
Saad:
You have a right not to be at risk? How does one define that right?
Luke :
Oh shit. So apparently we WEREN’T supposed to just google the definitions this time. Tricksy.
anteprepro:
Funny. I am taller and less hairy than a hobbit tho.
Luke, #294
Like this: Me and the children in my family have the right not to be murdered by you just because you like your drink. Surely that’s a far more reasonable right than your right not to be stopped by a police officer.
Too easy, fool. Next.
Luke at 290: What the fuck happened to Google!!? It’s almost like you don’t believe the things you say and are just randomly flinging shit around just to amuse yourself instead of arguing from a place of actually caring about facts and honesty! But that simply could not be so!!!
Fantasy creature of some sort at 296:
Tall and not hairy? Pics or it didn’t happen.
anteprepro:
Yes, because refusing to define a word when challenged in a condescending manner is totally the same as voluntarily clarifying my position.
anteprepro:
So you were not making a Hobbit reference when you called me tricksy?
Saad:
Being actually murdered is not the same as being at risk of being killed. But I’m sure you knew that already.
You have no right to increase risks to my life, liberty, etc., through your reckless dumbfuckery. In other words, we should be protected from libertarianism in all its forms. Fortunately for you, you benefit from some of that protection at the moment too. But the job’s nowhere near done in the US.
consciousness razor:
You’re funny. Interacting with the world around you increases risk, get over it. No govt reg stops risk, doesn’t even mitigate it in any meaningful sense. Libertarianism is like evolution. One day, if we’re lucky, we’ll leave these dark ages in which people believe in govt as god.
Wasn’t this dude already banned? On the other hand, people seem to be enjoying themselves. :)
@ Portia:
HA! This is why I rarely comment, since I’m swinging by in breaks between work.
Ok, I can’t resist:
Except without testable hypotheses, any coherent theory, or evidence. Otherwise, sure. Just like evolution.
Wow, Luke, it’s like the desires of other people to not be harmed and reaching an agreement that such policies must be in place to ensure those desires are met don’t matter to you at all. So much for choice!
Wow, for a minute there I thought Luke was capable of something resembling wit. Guess it was an illusion. Fitting, since his sockpuppeting asshattery will all fade like a mirage once the Squidly Overlord awakens.
PatrickG:
Well, one day you will realize that centralized control is useless and against human nature. Then you will be a libertarian like me.
Reckless driving is not bad either? So … well, if that made any fucking sense at all… then why the fuck would you want a law against it?
throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble:
Well, I have mostly been arguing about the most effective way to reach that goal, but some prefer to call me names. Others refuse to answer how my solution is less liberty friendly.
Exactly why I think it’s reprehensible. Evolution is callous, uncaring and takes billions of years for progress to occur.
Thanks to evolution giving us the ability to think and reason, education is the better system for improvement. Much faster, more flexible and easier to utilize than evolution.
Too bad you don’t reason very well.
consciousness razor:
Hm, is there another Luke posting here?
Luke:
Do you agree with the law about 25 above the limit being reckless? And what exactly, in your opinion, makes driving 25 above the limit reckless?
Suido:
Yes, those caring cops. They only beat, rape and kill us because they love us. If only we would unquestioningly obey we would have nothing to fear.
Evolution makes progress, centralization breeds stagnation, stagnation is death.
Radioactive Elephant:
The point there is that speeding is considered reckless. Speeding is observable. Drunkenness is not.
Luke #288:
My mistake. My point stands though: my original objection to you was regarding your contention that one should only be prosecuted if one causes an accident or is driving recklessly. "no one is hurt in his scenario, thus, no crime should be considered to be committed." My contention is that, regardless of how controlled your driving may appear, by drink-driving you are driving recklessly, by definition, and you are, and should be considered to be committing a crime. You are endangering the lives of others by driving in a condition in which your reactions are slower, while at the same time you have an artificially heightened sense of self-confidence. Worse yet, your ability to assess your own abilities is lowered. And all because soft-drinks didn’t appeal to you.
In short, matey, you're a selfish tosser.
Luke:
But what makes speeding reckless?
Right, drunkenness is magic. So say the libertarian gods. Can’t argue with that.
Radioactive Elephant:
That is not the point of contention friend.
Daz:
How do you know I am driving drunk? Do you like random checkpoints?
Luke @it doesn’t matter
You claim that the laws infringe upon liberty on their own. Then you invoke a single possible method of surveillance wholly separate from the law itself to illustrate that the law is an infringement.
In the words of Lewis Black, “WhbblblbhWHAT THE FUCK?!”
Luke:
Actually it is. Please answer.
yes, consequences only matter when you say they do. got it
Radioactive Elephant:
nope still not the point
Cause → Effect
Drunk driving → Reckless driving
Do you believe in libertarian free will, by any chance? Souls? Maybe you think the magic happens only inside your head and can’t escape? Sorry, but you live the real world with the rest of us.
consciousness razo:
So now you say driving drunk is not reckless? i am confused
Luke Anthony @212:
Eppur si muove.
As I say to creationists regarding evolution: it exists, regardless of whether you accept that it exists, regardless of whether you like that it exists and especially regardless of how loudly you deny that it exists.
Sure, public property might not exist in the tangible sense that evolution does. Sure, public property is just some arbitrary concept imposed on top of reality, like borders, the value of money, the Metric system and other practical human conceits, but like countless other arbitrary concepts, the idea of publicly-owned property is instituted by agreements among groups of humans and exerted upon reality by their actions to the point that it attains a measure tangibility (y’know, like the Constitutions that nations base their laws upon).
(Hey – do you realise private property doesn’t “exist” either? Sure, there are things and people that claim to “own” them because they exchanged some arbitrarily-valued pieces of paper or metal or digitally-stored numbers for those things, but what if those things were constructed by other people in a factory owned by still other people? What if that’s not “your” iPhone – what if it really “belongs” to the dozen people in that Chinese factory that put it together or the miners that extracted its component minerals or the designers or software engineers who invented it? Who are you to say you own anything just because it’s in your pocket and you have a piece of paper or a receipt number that says you do? They’re just arbitrary concepts agreed upon by large numbers of humans, after all. In the world of digitally-sold music and software, companies are already making you sign agreements that say you don’t own that stuff, you’re just buying a conditional license to use it. Those companies have arbitrarily removed the arbitrary concept of “private property” from their products. Because they can. Because, as I said, it was only ever a concept anyway.)
From a pragmatic point of view, the concept of public property has been around at least since the time of Ancient Greece, so good luck convincing most of the democratic developed world to abandon the idea wholesale and privatise their publicly-owned parks, courthouses, roads, town squares, national parks, schools, universities, hospitals, armed forces, police & emergency services, utilities, bridges, clouds, pigeons and whatever else. Frankly I’m glad so much infrastructure and so many institutions are state-owned – governments don’t often do an exemplary job of maintaining or upgrading them, but I’d take a lazy government with legal obligations to do those jobs over a corporation who’d shed material and human resources to improve their margins at the drop of a hint. As an Australian with a close eye on an increasingly rapacious and destructive Tory government fulfilling wish-lists given them by far-right billionaires, I could easily list the myriad consequences of allowing unfettered private interests to take charge of education, healthcare and the environment – mostly because some are imminent and others have already been narrowly avoided.
Of course, none of the negative results of the deregulation and “cutting of green tape” wished for by the CEOs running the conservative government would have measurable negative effects on those doing the profiteering and destroying, but hey – since when would a libertarian or far-right ultra-capitalist give a desperate, regrettable 4am fuck about anyone else’s welfare?
Hank:
“believe in” means I do not believe it is acceptable. like if i said i don’t believe in segregation. long post to miss the point to utterly
You’re not just confused, Luke. You’re making yourself look like a dishonest, blithering idiot. There’s a difference.
consciousness razor:
is drunk driving the cause if recklessness or is it reckless on its own. your structure showed drunkenness as a cause.
Three word slogans make it easier to ignore more nuanced arguments that are inconvenient to your worldview.
Did you actually just perform this mental leap in your answer to me…
Libertarianism is callous and uncaring, but that’s better than authoritarianism, so therefore libertarianism is best.
All of my comments in this thread have been predicated on a police force that has evidence to show for its professionalism and fitness for upholding the law impartially. You’re a fucking idiot who can’t string two ideas together in a logical order.
Suido:
since you are defending authoritarian policy, i take you for an authoritarian.
Luke @324
If this pitiful orphaned comment was meant to be to me, your condescension is unearned.
Here is the cause and effect at play here: people drink drive, people that drink drive cause accidents, other people don’t like that, people ask their representatives for laws against drink driving, those laws are implemented, those laws are enforced through investigation: one method of investigation that is not a necessary component for successful enforcement of that law that you feel violates personal liberty does not mean that the drink driving laws are “on their own infringements on liberty.” So either you suck at communication or you suck at logic. Given your behavior thus far, I’m going with both.
throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble:
checkpoints are a consequence of drunk driving laws. You could try to refute that I suppose. There is no other way to enforce the law. Do you have an alternative means of checking for drunkenness when one is not displaying any signs of such?
Luke #321:
Nope, I’m the flithy grass who phoned the cops when you weaved out of the pub, car keys in hand, saying 'Of course I'm fit to drive.'
(Yes: I have done that, and would do so again. I've worked in pubs and restaurants and seen, on a nightly basis, through sober eyes, the state of far too many people who were convinced they were in a fit state to control a ton or so of fast-moving metal in the vicinity of easily-broken human beings.)
I repeat. Our segment of this thread did not start because of a statement regarding checkpoints. It started when you stated a 'no harm, no foul' opinion, and I objected to that opinion. It's that opinion which leads me to call you selfish.
I have no problem with you calling the cops on the obviously drunk. The assumption I made about the texan’s statement is that he drank and drove safely. You obviously know this is possible. My only point of contention is that dui laws lead to this type of checkpoint because not all drunk drivers display unsafe behaviors while driving.
Luke @ 329, read again for comprehension.
You:
Me:
You:
Me: I think I covered that definition of “believe” in my first response. You didn’t just miss my point; you didn’t even see the fucking thing.
But I’ll clarify: whether you think public property is acceptable (i.e. whether you like that it exists) is irrelevant. It’s there. So what are you going to do about it? Have a coupla beers, drive home and mumble “fuck you, The Man!” all the way home? That appears to be the extent of libertarian activism that I’ve encountered.
Well, that and trolling comment threads – including coming back as a sockpuppet after being banned.
If you believe so hard in private property – which this blog, as a privately-owned and operated corner of the internet, actually is – why not honour the host’s banning of your former ID and respect his request for you to fuck off? His property, his rules, right? Oh, but wait – libertarian rules only apply to other people. So if you have an axe to grind, I suppose we’re back to “fuck you, The Man!” Right?
Luke:
It is, because the things that make speeding reckless, make drunk driving reckless. Mainly a decrease in reaction time to and control of the car during changes in road conditions (curves, other cars, deer, etc). So in both cases you’re putting others at risk. Drunk driving is just as reckless as speeding, even without weaving. You can speed way over the limit most days and totally make it home with no problem. But if something does happen, there is a good chance you won’t be able to respond. Same with drunk driving. This happens enough in both cases, that to protect others from your recklessness, they make laws against it. You agree that speeding becomes reckless at a point, even if somebody doesn’t actually get hurt during the speeding. The mere act is reckless in itself.
But with speeding, at least others can know you’re doing it.
You asked how we’re supposed know you’re drunk while driving, claiming that it’s somehow unobservable. On the contrary, the observable effects of this drunkenness, while in the act of driving, are the reckless behaviors involved in your driving which anybody can see with no difficulty, without being in your head or having specialized equipment to test your psychological or physiological condition. Then, when pulled over for this, things like Breathalyzers can complete the necessary observations. Note that no checkpoint laws are required for that, which was one of your other asinine claims.
hank:
you mentioned my definition, but did nothing to refute the position. not believing in public property may lead one to drive without a license.
Luke #337:
Your assumption is wrong. Nobody drinks-and-drives safely. They merely drive luckily or unluckily. That was my point. The point I stated quite bloody clearly, and which you have yet to properly address.
consciousness razor:
so you agree with me. dui checkpoints do not fit what you describe. these are what i and the texan are objecting to.
Daz:
Not true. I can drink little enough that I can, in fact, drive home safely. By which I mean I can follow all the rules of the road and react in a span of time such that I am not increasing anyone’s risk. However, I will take as a given that we are talking about those drunk enough that they are inherently unsafe and just lucky to get home. Nevertheless, if they exhibit no observable behavior re: drunkenness, enforcement will always be inappropriate.
The fuck I do.
No, you’ve said a fuckload of incoherent shit, making a total mess of whatever point you thought wanted to make. It’s got to be the least convincing set of “arguments” for removing checkpoints I could imagine. Saying “bllaaaaaaaa” a few hundred times in a row might have done more to help me change my mind.
FTFY.
FWIW, the label I identify with strongest is anti-authoritarian. So, once again, you’re wrong. There’s a pattern emerging.
consciousness razor:
Well, it may have taken a lot to get you to agree with me, but we did it. I agree that drunk drivers should be pulled over when they exhibit reckless behavior. I am sorry you found my method incoherent.
Suido:
defending the cops ability to engage in illegal search and seizure, regardless of how “convenient” it is for you is still defending authoritarianism. Just because you gave yourself an ironic label does not make it accurate.
BWAHAHAHHAA!
PatrickG:
Well, maybe not like me, but almost as awesome. If you’re lucky.
Luke #344:
Please someone gimme a quid for each of the times I've heard that one.
Do me a favour, get a job in construction and try this line on your supervisor: 'I refuse to put on a hard hat because nothing's fallen on my head yet.'
[Link]
Luke:
If a logical consequence of not believing in public property leads you to drive around without a license, I have no sympathy for you if you get fined or banned from driving. The rules are: you pay to play or you sit on the bench (I’m sure that’s how you’d run shit if you were out there carving our your own roads and charging admission). That’s not me being an authoritarian, it’s being a realist and a pragmatist. Don’t like fines? Pay your way.
Also, I left some thoughts about the idea of public property in that post which you appear to have read past – as well as some thoughts on the idea of private property.
So, what about respecting the banning you received from the Right & Proper Owner of this blog? It’s his property, so are you going to respect his wishes regarding his property and those he permits to use it?
And hey – capital letters are preferred for names. That’s what they taught me in my state school, anyway. But, y’know, “fuck you, The Man!” Right?
Daz:
It would be silly to refuse to obey my boss. Since you are not suggesting we arrest those who refuse hardhats, I have no problem with agreeing it is silly behavior.
Here’s the thing, though: drink driving is by its very nature reckless driving. Any amount of inattentiveness or impairment on the road while operating a speeding death-trap is reckless. Driving requires your full attention and full coordination between your brain and your body. If you are unable to do so then we do not license you to drive on public roads. If at any point you make a conscious (inebriated) choice to take your chances and risk the lives of other people with your impaired driving then you are being reckless to a degree. Your insistence that it has to be accompanied with a reckless act in order for it to be punished is tosh. The enforcement of the law will act as a deterrent to those who will otherwise say “I’m fine” one too many times and suffer the finality of all that entails.
As a communist, PZ Meyers does not believe in his own property rights. As a result I have no respect for them. However, I probably would not come back from a second ban, simply because I have a fairly limited social media presence. If I find rules, or those who enforce them to be immoral, I have no problem ignoring those rules. I agree with you that Mr. Watkins cannot fight the fines if he breaks the law. But it is hard to change laws without ridiculous examples of their enforcement e.g. Eric Garner and selling loosies.
throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble:
It may well be that being drunk and driving are inherently reckless. It is unacceptable to infringe on people’s rights to be secure against unreasonable searches just for the possibility that some are drunk. That is why we have a constitution in America, to protect our rights.
Also, boo-fucking-hoo, the tyranny of the majority of people who would rather their drives not be ended by dipshits who think they can make it home after “a few” beers, and who favor the enforcement of well-specified laws meant to curtail problem behaviours. Oh woe is our liberty! Seriously though, you have my sympathies. It must suck to be a Randian.
Hope never dies!
To others, since this guy’s clearly a waste of bandwidth: I actually had a conversation with a libertarian who argued that government intervention on acid rain and CFCs was unnecessary, because the free market would have taken care of it in short form.
He’s now a climate change denialist. Guess that one’s just a bit too hard to leave up to the free market.
You just don’t respect other human beings. That’s the long and short of it.
Luke, PZ Myers (again, read for comprehension) isn’t a communist. I’m fairly sure he’s more of a realist than that.
It’s becoming pretty obvious that it’s not just your social media presence that’s limited.
Once again, you’re wrong. I’m defending random breath tests as conducted in Australia by booze buses. I’ve been very consistent on this. There is no evidence that booze bus operations give cops the ability to illegally search and seize, or evidence that that has occurred. There is no evidence that these mobile checkpoints have done anything but bust people for driving drunk and create a minor inconvenience for everyone else.
As I said in my very first post in this thread, the US problem of cops abusing their authority is not a problem with the policy, but with the police themselves. The policy can work fine.
I see this time and time again: anyone who isn’t a libertarian is automatically branded a communist. Like there’s no possible position on the political spectrum between “I got mine, fuck you” and “The state has yours, fuck you”.
consciousness razo:
Yes, I, the one defending people’s rights to be safe from unreasonable search and seizure, am the one not respecting others.
Hank:
PZ has explicitly called himself a communist on the internet and on tv.
PatrickG:
For what it’s worth, most libertarians are indifferent (scientifically speaking) to climate change and focus more on the marxist policies generally advocated for the mitigation of climate change.
@ Hank_Says
I would respectfully submit that this should be rephrased as “I got mine, let me take yours, too”.
Luke #353:
Keep it up and you'd be out of a job though, matey. Roads, like construction sites, are dangerous places. If you refuse to obey common-sense safety precautions—especially in ways which endanger others—then your right of access to them should be taken away so as to safeguard >em>their freedom to get home alive and uninjured. There’s that freedom thing again: it cuts both ways.
And by the way, in my second reply to you, I stated 'That you may be lucky enough not to harm others by your stupidity is purely a matter of chance.' It’s noteworthy that your reply reframed that statement so that it became about your own personal safety: 'It is your responsibility to prove that I made it home safe by chance, not mine.’
As I say, you appear to be just a tad selfish, old chap.
Suido:
Texas is in Australia? I thought we were discussing the story at hand, maybe I missed where you started talking about Australia, seriously. I know Australians do not take human rights as seriously as texans.
Daz:
I am not responsible for your safety, only my own. I choose not to drive drunk, usually. I do not defend my choice to do it. I only say that sober people should not have their rights violated for the slim chance of catching the likes of you or I.
PatrickG:
“I got mine let me take yours too” is precisely the stance of the statist, not the libertarian.
Just making sure this doesn’t get lost, from Luke:
So libertarians are:
(1) scientifically illiterate, because I don’t know how you can be “indifferent (scientifically speaking)” to any factual matter, let alone something as important as climate change; and,
(2) more wedded to ideology than fact (who knew, right?)
This guy is right up there with the ‘but coal plants would have stopped burning sulfurous fuel on their own’ guy I referenced up above. At what point is it just mean to make fun of someone this stupid?
Your boss must be a statist, right?
Luke #367:
PatrickG:
Indifference meaning they ought not to care which position is right, only that the facts are correct. The earth is warming (or cooling), what should we do about it? Ideology guides policy preferences? Who knew right?
Oops. Must remember to make a sacrifice to BorkQuotia.
Daz:
To each his own. You think that your unenforceable rights trump my actual rights. As of today you win, since we have these checkpoints. I hope one day you lose.
Luke:
Ok, now I’m interested. What is the libertarian strategy for mitigating the effects of climate change?
Don’t worry, I didn’t expect you to have actually read everyone’s comments before spouting bullshit. Far too much to ask, obviously.
Australia has a pretty abysmal human rights record, especially with regard to asylum seekers. At least we stopped executing innocent people. Right to life is important, yes?
Libertarianism: the theory that the human race should act like newborn babies. All rights, no responsibilities.
PatrickG:
Libertarian solution:
Allow people like you who believe in it strongly to convince the rest of us to go against our economic interests and eschew carbon based fuels.
Now, I know this doesn’t allow for the level of graft you may be comfortable with, but there it is. There’s other means as well, but they all ignore coercive measures, so you would not likely be interested in them.
Daz:
Have you read any libertarian philosophers or better ambassadors than myself?
Suido:
Texas is not great re: death penalty obviously/
Well, let’s look at a study that doesn’t measure “impairment”, but looks at who gets to be dead.
The other way to survey the dangers of driving when affected by alcohol is to check the BAC of fatalities in vehicle crashes.
The legal limit in Australia is 0.05. If these people had drunk less, or not at all, it would be a great boon to any society to reduce road fatalities (and the proportionate number of catastrophic brain and spine injuries from not-quite-fatal incidents) by 10%, 20%, or 30+%. If we had a 0.08 limit the number of fatalities would be higher. Sweden seems to do OK with a zero BAC for everyone, not just for provisional licenses and taxi or bus drivers.
As for RBT and booze buses. You’d have to be pretty dumb or pretty determined to drink and drive if you get caught in Australia. At this time of the year, everyone can see the booze buses being set up alongside the main roads out of the city centre here in Adelaide. There should be a “blitz” with practically every significant road covered for most of the weekend afternoons and evenings on at least one of the weekends leading up to Xmas. Anyone who gets done for exceeding the limit has only themselves to blame.
*falls over laughing*
Supremely arrogant? Check.
Thoroughly self-entitled? Check.
Gleefully immature? Check.
Prone to going too far with an argument then having to backpedal furiously to avoid pursuing a line of reasoning to its inconvenient conclusion? Check.
Nope. You’re the perfect ambassador for libertarianism.
Luke #378:
Nope. As with all religion, I prefer to go by what the sheep believe, not what their unworldly apologists pretend is the 'real' thing. That's what defines the actual religion.
Suido:
The point I took too far, of course, had nothing to do with libertarianism, but ok. And how is it arrogant to admit there are better ambassadors than myself?
Re-posting in full because you are, in fact, “scientifically indifferent” to the realities of climate change. It’s simply amazing that you’d take extremely well-founded scientific data/theories and twist them just so until they fit your worldview. Hurricanes, drought, famine, disease… these are just “graft” and “coercion” to you. Simply unbelievable… or at least it would be if outright idiocy like this wasn’t common.
It’s been fun poking you for quotable moments, but in the final analysis you’re just willfully uneducated and unwilling to look beyond your preconceptions. For your sake, I hope someday that changes.
This Marxist has to get back to work. Wouldn’t want to offend my
statist overlordboss.Is that the only arrogance you think you’ve displayed in this thread? Is that the only objection you have to the first three of my checks?
PatrickG:
The poor reading comprehension necessary to make that post is astounding. The policies you would advocate to try to mitigate the damage of climate change provide opportunities for graft. I assumed you knew that, but maybe I was wrong.
Oh jebus. I just looked back up the thread and noticed the banning.
I'm out. Dishonest sockpuppet arseholes just ain't my thing.
Suido:
Probably not the only arrogance, but certainly nothing more than I have seen from you nonlibertarians. Your other points were either not worth refuting or true, take your pick.
Luke:
Oh, but you’re adorable. Boop!
Please allow me to point out that the title of this post has now become a two-fer.
Daz:
Sockpuppeting involves pretending I am not the person I was before.
Let me psychically predict zombie!Luke’s post: They will be dismissive, pompous, arrogant, and damn proud of it. And they will continue to carry themselves as though it is we plebians who simply have yet to appreciate the grandness of Libertarianism at its absolute worst. I will be having my little moment of schadenfreude when PZ comes in and drops a Turn Undead on the thread. I think the only thing not completely reprehensible and disagreeable about you is that you aren’t screaming about unjust censorship.
Hank:
It is painfully obvious that you do not know the first thing about libertarianism other than what PZ and his ilk present to you. Can you even name a libertarian philosopher or list any of their positions?
omnicrom:
Unjust, no. Laughable, yes. Are you afraid of being left to your own devices? Libertarians just want to leave you alone friend.
It’s hard to imagine people who are capable of being even more full of shit than you are, which is the primary qualification for a libertarian philosopher. But, arrogant or not… do you really think they exist, or is this just another one of the libertarian ghost stories you tell to scare the children, pets, etc.?
I’ll also point out quickly, because I’m leaving my private home to go to a private pub on public roads in a private taxi, that the libertarian solutions to climate change that I’ve seen here in Australia run roughly parallel to the conservative solutions, which amount to “Climate change is crap! Coal is good for humanity!”
consciousness razor:
I see you are upset with yourself for agreeing with me. It is ok, it happens when people engage their brains.
Hank:
Poor ignorant man. Use Uber, not a taxi.
Luke, I’m arguing with you and what you’re saying, not with your favourite theologians. Just like with religion, I criticise how it’s practised and expressed by its ordinary (or sub-ordinary) adherents and its assorted trolls and sockpuppets.
Hank:
True, but a passing familiarity with those whom you know I agree would keep you from making foolish assertions.
Oh fine, one last comment:
It’s so adorable that you think you know what I would advocate. G’nite pumpkin.
PatrickG:
As if it is not obvious
Well, the title of the post is “Let’s point and laugh at the libertarian”. So, Luke, while my latest admin tools run, why don’t you tell me my ever-so-obvious positions.
Go on. If it’s that obvious, you should be able to detail it quite easily.
PatrickG:
Why, any policy which involves using coercion to get your desired result.
That’s the best you can do? Come on, at least tell me which people I’m coercing.
Luke
You are a very funny little person.
Bless your heart.
and
buhbye
I don’t think Luke is used to thinking of people. Abstract ideals are so hard to apply to, y’know, reality. Where people live.
I think that Luke us a troll.
I think that Luke will have another Ban.
He’s been a very revealing troll, in my opinion. Educational trolls are the best trolls, by which I mean assholes exposing their worldview helps everyone repudiate said worldview.
Do keep on trolling, Luke. Just makes everyone understand how intellectually bankrupt libertarianism is. :)
PatrickG
I think that Luke has been sameold
But it’s always new
Personally I haven’t seen such a persistent asshat in a while, in any forum. However, far be it from me to deny your apparently greater experience.
Perspective. It’s what Luke desperately needs to learn.
Luke @ 367
I despise you.
So LIbertarianism equals “you can’t ban me from your blog because FREEDOM!” apparently.
Continuing to post after having been banned isn’t being an obnoxious asshole, it’s not trolling… it’s sticking to your principles!
Such fun. After this maybe I’ll go back to talking with the gross “feminism is evil because CAPITALISM, which is self-evidently better than socialism or anything else, because good = PROFIT, because we evolved from APES!” libertarian guy on YouTube.
toast
Hey, my QA checks finally completed, and libertarian still hasn’t responded to my request for who, precisely, my Global Climate Change Agenda would be harming. Libertarians are apparently unwilling to defend themselves with specifics.
Jafafa Hots: I salute you for your fortitude, and also question your sanity…. YouTube comment sections?! You do have a supply of brain bleach handy, right?
So… here’s a question then, the answer to which will tell me probably everything I need to know about you.
Do you consider John Stuart Mill a libertarian?
not judging by your performance here.
here’s what’s gonna happen:
you’re gonna get banned.
then all your posts are going down the shithole where they belong.
hope that suits you.
and I hope one day you get hit by a drunk driver, just like Kory Watkins.
and get a ticket for driving uninsured, which you probably are.
and get your vehicle impounded for driving without a license, like all good glibertarians like Watkins should be doing, right?
and you refuse medical service, because you are uninsured and don’t want a government handout.
then everyone will be happy to just leave you alone.
Lie much? Why do liberturds call anybody who disagrees with their infantile theology communists? Because they have no idea what real communism means. They, in their ignorance, see it as a scare word to insult people. PZ is a liberal progressive.
You are a liberturd, all mouth and attitude singing inane slogans, but can’t/won’t show your ideas work in reality. I’m still waiting for that evidence….
Luke, #302
I have the right to be safe from the risk of being murdered by people deliberately making decisions that lead to that risk.
For example, a piece of shit lowlife, murder-defending asshole like you.
Are you a fair representative of libertarianism? I don’t know much about it, but you’re giving me the impression that libertarians support killing kids as long as the killer is able to drink alcohol whenever the killer wants.
Luke vomited semi-coherently forth, regarding libertarian philosophers:
What, like having a passing familiarity with PZ Myers before declaring him a communist? Based on his own words, labelling him a communist is so far from accurate you’d have to be an idiot or a liar – or to have never read or comprehended anything he’s written regarding his political beliefs – to believe such a thing. But hey, if assuming he’s a commie helps you to rationalise your coming back to his private property after he banned you (coz, y’know, commies don’t believe in private property, y’know), go ahead and rationalise your ass off. We all know how much internet libertarians love to label anyone who isn’t in their club a fucking commie and we all know how lazy and boring it is. Having said that, it’s a good indicator of the integrity or breadth of education of the person you’re dealing with – as soon as someone starts throwing “communist” around as a trump card like it’s 1955, everyone present knows they’ve lost.
Again, bollocks to being familiar with the people whose ideals you’re personally unable to convey. I don’t have to know the theology to dismiss the faith; I take issue with everyday believers and everyday beliefs, not the theoretical musings of insulated academics. Libertarianism, its faith in the free market, its demonisation of public property and fear & loathing of such trifles as fucking road rules is as much a fantasy as Christianity (although it could be said that at least Christians have managed to achieve some good things in this world).
And now I do believe I’ve spent enough time pissing into this particular breeze.
Luke, this blog is my property. You apparently have no respect for property rights.
Now get the fuck off my blog and stay off, you dishonest hypocritical libertarian.
Good morning! Nice font size there.
My come-to-jesus moment with respect to drunk driving was a day when I hung out with friends over a lazy afternoon. I had two crap beers along with hotdogs and other crap food. A couple hours after my last sip of beer, I drove home on a nearly empty highway (it’s a sparsely populated area).
Never again. My reflexes felt much sloppier than usual, and I could tell my judgment was impaired, so I had to think twice about everything before being sure it was a good idea.
I highly doubt my BAC was over 0.08% ; it was probably even below 0.05%.
@Suido, you’re right that the booze buses appear to be used in a non- discriminatory manner. I found no evidence otherwise.
So the next time you feel yourself tempted to mock a libertarian, remember that he is an emotional cripple, impaired with a personality disorder which leaves him powerless to do anything but argue all day with strangers on the internet.
Or he could be deliberately pandering to the emotional cripples in order to manipulate them. Either way, public mockery is still necessary to ensure that at least their dishonest, unhinged and sometimes dangerous bullshit does not stand unchallenged.
You are a liberturd, …can’t/won’t show your ideas work in reality.
Sure he can — he just has to go to Somalia. Or back in time to the Articles of Confederation…
The policies you would advocate to try to mitigate the damage of climate change provide opportunities for graft.
Wow, that’s such a horrid choice to have to make…graft or global ecological catastrophe? We’ll have to have ten more years of studies to figure out the best option…
anteprepro@278:
Actually that might be a tad less true than you think. At least here in Virginia. It’s an older story though and I think cops have backed off since, but technically I think they can camp out in bars and break out the cuffs since it is technically public intoxication.
the very first really odd thing I discovered in New Zealand?
turns out, it’s illegal to serve alcohol to someone who appears intoxicated. No kidding. So, you’re in a bar, after your fifth beer, the bartender is supposed to eye you warily and tell you you’ve had enough… and if he doesn’t, it’s HIS risk, not yours.
not terribly well enforced, as you can imagine, but it is on occasion (usually gets a remark in the local paper when it does happen).
does it reduce the number of drink divers? I haven’t actually detailed the statistics myself.
but without even looking at them… what would YOU expect?
nich: It’s true, public drunkenness is illegal. It is a bullshit crime, and I am surprised at my own surprise that the cops apparently they are relying on an absurd definition of “public” to get some easy and stupid arrests. But that’s the American legal system and police force for ya.
Driving is a right. Don’t make me cite all of the court cases in this regard, including even SCOTUS.
Next, do not confuse “it is a right” with “it must necessarily be unregulatd”. It is a right to speak, but it can be regulated. It is a right to open and maintain a business, but it can be regulated. It is a right to drive on the road, but it can be regulated. Driving is not a privilege; in the sense that “privilege” means that the government can arbitrarily deny and grant it. If the government would apply arbitrary restrictions on it, you could challenge those restrictions (under the ninth), and you could win. If the restrictions were severe enough, and far enough removed from serving a compelling government purpose, then you would win.
Again, this is the standard position of all of the US case law on this topic for decades at least.
…
@throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Didn’t you take any high school civics? That’s the same argument. The fourth amendment is not a protection of the people’s privacy interests or interests against being inconvenienced by searches and seizures. It is a limit on government power to prevent abuses, such as targeting and harassing minorities. There are reasons why preventing police state and statism is bad, and it’s not because of some anarchist kneejerk-reaction.
…
The argument for sobriety checkpoints seems to be that the increase in public safety is worth more than the loss of privacy and personal inconvenience. Exactly where would this stop?
For example, New York stop and frisk. Are you guys ok with allowing the police to randomly stop people on the street to frisk them? Imagine what kinds of crimes they could catch, from drug offenses, to gun offenses. Imagine all of the gun deaths that could be prevented with sidewalk-side drug and gun checkpoints.
For example, how does that reasoning not apply to the massive US government surveillance programs to snoop email? Sure it may not have caught a single terrorist, but we have plenty of evidence that it’s caught many, many other kinds of offenders (including lots of drug traffickers). For those in the thread in favor of sobriety checkpoints, are you also in favor of allowing the government to record all email and phone call metadata and to be able to access that without a warrant as is common practice now?
The fourth amendment is not about protecting privacy and protecting against personal inconvenience of a particular search and seizure. It is about preventing the US from becoming like cliche Nazi Germany films where the police would go around asking “papers please”.
…
@Nerd
Yes I know that SCOTUS ruled that sobriety checkpoints are legal. I think they got it wrong. I know that you can cite many cases where you think SCOTUS got it wrong too.
…
@Ichthyic
This is ridiculous. If the only way to stop a crime was to be in a police state, you would be in favor of that? I’m sorry, we cannot catch all crimes.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Putting in a police state does more harm than good.
…
@Dalillama, Schmott Guy
So, you do want a police state! Because your police are the good police who would never do anything bad, and power doesn’t corrupt, etc. etc.
Wow.
…
PS:
As already pointed out, Raging Bee did a Dear Muslima:
Just wanted to point that out again.
slippery slope argument in 3…2…1
and that, ironically, coming from someone who their opening paragraph, RECOGNIZED that rights are not a binary thing; that they can indeed be appropriately regulated.
you’re laughable. really. why anyone bothers with you is beyond me.
@Ichthyic
You didn’t answer my questions.
Are you in favor of New York stop and frisk?
Are you in favor of the US CIA / NSA massive email and phone metadata surveillance program?
I’m not arguing slippery slope. I’m arguing that sobriety checkpoints represent the bottom of the slope. If they are allowed, I fail to see what is meaningfully disallowed.
I don’t think “slippery slope” is a fallacy when we can see all around us the evidence of cops taking advantage of whatever they can to terrorize the population, especially the minority and female-presenting populations. A case just came down where a person turned away from a checkpoint, and was pulled over on that basis alone and the court held that was ok. Where does it stop, because it rarely stops now. Do you have any idea how hard it is to win a motion to suppress as it is? Cops can very easily establish probable cause, and most people here seem to think they should even have to do that. Even with the law the way it is, people are subject to illegal searches and you have to have the good luck to get a judge that cares.
LOL you couldn’t argue honestly if your fucking life depended on it.
sad.
oh fuck me. that’s just pathetic. now ALL police actions are acts of intended terrorism, and you consider that NOT a slippery slope argument??
I’m done, this is getting too stupid to continue.
@Ichthyic
You’re the one evading questions and refusing to engage, and yet you have the gall to call me dishonest. Nice!
You’re misstating me and declining to engage the substance of my arguments. I don’t get your point. I guess it’s just as well that you’re done.
Sorry, here’s my evidence it is a privilege. Being able to travel is a right, but that doesn’t translate to operating a motor vehicle on public roads. It is up to you to show it is a right.
@Nerd
Might help if you read more than one sentence to see how I already responded to that point. Like, the very next sentence even.
PS: Nerd, if you still want citations, here’s the SCOTUS one.
Bell v. Burson (1971)
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/402/535/case.html
The perspective of a layman:
Everyone agrees drunk driving is a crime that endangers all and should be prevented (modulo a banned troll). Both available options, checkpoints and saturation patroles (though there are certainly others? others yet to be thought of?) have bad unintended consequences. But drunk driving is pernicious enough that we have to do something. So just go municipality by municipality, and choose whichever option maximizes safety and minimizes bad consequences (for which we’ll need police oversight). And in the meantime, address the systemic police violence everyone again agrees is rather horrible. Qued?
(I do realize dropping in with “Hey, let me summarize it all up for you 400 commenters” is rather condescending. Well, it’s a contribution?)
Again, I’m trying to emphasize that I fundamentally disagree with that reasoning. If the only options to combat it are worse than what we’re trying to combat, then no, we should not do something. Rather, we have to evaluate policy proposals by comparing them to each other, not to some idealized utopia.
They can no more do that constitutionally than establish their own little city with an official religion. The constitution contains a certain list of things which are taken out of the hands of the legislature, and IMHO roadside sobriety checkpoints are one such thing (contra to the SCOTUS ruling of the opposite).
This link, http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811870.pdf, which I got via the magic of google, tells me that there were 10,322 fatalities in 2012, representing 31% of all driving fatalities (you’ll note I’m lazily quoting a blurb…). I really can’t see how anything is worse than that. Surely, we can do two things at the same time: attempt to stop drunk driving, while also attempting to stop police overreach (for which I’m sure one can also bring up depressing statistics).
It looks like you’re disagreeing with the facts, not the reasoning. If it is pernicious enough, then the options are not worse than what we’re trying combat.
@gakxz1
Do you think the fourth amendment is a good idea? Are you in favor of repealing the fourth amendment? If you allow this kind of search absent all (individual) probable cause, and if you are “in favor of the fourth amendment”, then what searches are disallowed under your proposed standard? I struggle to think of something.
Suppose we have the friend of someone who was just murdered, stabbed. Right now, on that alone, it’s not enough to demand access to the friend’s house to search for his knives and clothes to see if they can find a DNA match. Do you think that standard should change? Here, we at least have some level of individialized suspicion, which is better than roadside sobriety checkpoints. This kind of search will hinder far less people and invade the privacy of far less people when compared to roadside sobriety checkpoints. Right? Are you also in favor of allowing the police to do this kind of search on this level of “probable cause”?
I fail to see a relevant meaningful difference between my hypothetical blood search here and roadside sobriety checkpoints. Hell, in some sense, I find the search of the murder victim’s friend to be more reasonable than roadside sobriety checkpoints – at least there’s individualized cause in that case.
10,000 deaths per year? I know that sounds big, but in a population of 300,000,000 people, it’s not amazingly big. For example, the number of suicides is bigger. And we’re talking about inconveniencing everyone, or in my view allowing the police to harass basically anyone in the population. It’s an amazing amount of control for minimal gains IMHO. Again, on this standard, you might as well repeal the fourth amendment as far as I can tell.
Yep, just like building codes and food service laws… oh look, there it is, a slippery slope argument. I bet the follow up to this is an analogous case is not a directly predictable outcome of the primary case, and hence can’t claim immunity from being a slippery slope by way of actual, predictable causation.
What a guess. I’m such a good guesser. You know why these cases don’t follow on from each other? Because drunk drivers don’t get into the car planning to run a red and t-bone another car, or smash into a tree, or plough through the front wall of a house. So, for stop and frisk to be analogous, it must be intended to prevent pedestrians causing accidental* damage. Which it isn’t. But, just for the sake of the argument, let’s see why the case still doesn’t apply.
The incidence of pedestrians causing accidental* fatalities, injuries and personal property damage is too low to justify any countermeasures. Simple, neh? If there were more people accidentally killing and injuring others while walking around drunk, I’d reconsider my opinion.
The incidence of vehicle drivers causing accidental* fatalities, injuries and personal property damage by is high enough to warrant countermeasures, in my opinion. Alcohol is a contributor to a significant percentage (see comment #380) of those accidents, which justifies random breath tests. Not license checks, not car searches. Random breath tests.
Now, I understand that RBTs are used as a pretext for more invasions of privacy, but if you get rid of RBTs, that problem won’t go away because there are other pretexts. Australia has shown that RBT checkpoints can be done professionally and appropriately (Thanks qwints #425). QED.
I’m sympathetic to people who want to restrict the powers of police who have proven themselves to be irresponsible with those powers. I wish you luck in treating the root cause, so that sensible, evidence based policing strategies for improving the safety of a community don’t have to be tossed out because they’re being abused.
*IANAL. For the legal pedants: by accidental, I mean unplanned, not deliberate, not malicious, incompetence rather than intent, however it should be best phrased.
Accident statistics show where and when drunk driving accidents are most prevalent. Police reports would hopefully contain information on where people are travelling from. Let’s say there’s a particular strip of bars and clubs which seems to be the origin of many vehicle trips with drunk drivers that ended in an accident.
Do you think this doesn’t constitute reasonable cause for police to set up check points on major thoroughfares leading away from that strip, as well as frequent random patrols through the backstreets?
@Suido
Are you saying that police get more search powers to stop accidental crimes vs purposeful crimes? What? Why? I fail to see what this irrelevant distinction has to do with this discussion.
Let’s talk handgun violence. It’s also in the neighborhood of 10,000 deaths per year in the United States. Why are you ignoring that and refusing to allow stop and frisk?
You didn’t answer my question about the US CIA / NSA email and phone metadata surveillance program. Would you be in favor or against such a program done by your government? We have lots of real evidence that it does stop crime and catch criminals. We have lots of evidence that privacy violations and inconveniences are minimal – hell we barely knew about the program for a decade. I fail to see how you could be for roadside sobriety checkpoints but against the Orwellian metadata surveillance state, when the Orwellian metadata surveillance rates better on the metrics of “criminals caught” vs “abuse”.
Legal justification for searching and seizing? Hell no.
Logical justification for increasing police presence in the area? Yes.
Follow on questions from #449:
Would you consider it probable cause for a police presence in car parks near those bars, using hand held breath testers on people as they drive out the car parks?
This comes from a) a Sovereign Citizen b) Liberturd, or c) a radical ACLU member. Nobody, without your hyperbole, is saying repeal. Like all items, it is a balance between personal freedom, and the ability to regulate society so it can function. With a privilege like driving, the state gets to determine what is and isn’t permissible. But you go to extremes, with the “slippery slope” BS, just like the anti-choice fuckwits, and the Xian extremists, where if they don’t get their way, society is going to hell in a handbasket.
And suicide is a crime to you? If not, why aren’t you comparing it to another criminal action? And why would a higher rate for this other crime be relevant to whether or not the first crime (drunk driving) should be enforced a certain way?
Harassing them? What’s so amazing about stopping people along the road in circumstances where there is a reasonable probability of drunk driving in some of the population (like in the Australian program described above, let’s say, not the way US forces are doing it now)? I mean, this is supposed to be compared to the amazingness of drunk driving causing injury, death, damage, etc., which I figure is pretty large. What’s a reasonable way to enforce laws against drunk driving, to discourage it in the population so it doesn’t become a bigger problem than it already is, instead of simply locking even more people up in our hideous prison system after the fact, which only adds to the injustice of the injuries/deaths/damage due to the act itself which I already mentioned?
I prefer the factually accurate term “average ACLU member”. You are saying nobody is for repealing it? It seems that people are. It seems that people are ready to completely throw out the warrant requirement, the individualized probable cause requirement, just to purchase temporary safety. There’s not much left of the fourth amendment when you do that.
@consciousness razor
Reasonable probability is not probable cause. Reasonable probability does not a reasonable search and seizure. There is a reasonable probability that a murderer is someone who knew the victim closely, and so the probability of finding incriminating evidence by searching the houses of all close friends of a murder victim is higher than finding a drunk driver via random stops at a roadside checkpoint.
And still no one is taking me up on the US NSA / CIA phone and email metadata collection and analysis. I wonder why that is.
What is so hard to understand that probable cause is necessarily individualized.
For example, according to wikipedia:
SCOTUS
Brinegar v. United States
We are trying to prevent the cliche of Nazi Germany where the police walk around and demand “papers please” on no personalized basis whatsoever. The individualized component of probable cause is an indispensable component of probable cause.
PS: I admire the person who brought up building code inspections. This is actually a good comparison that is making me think. It is quite comparable. The police do randomized inspections (or based on complaints) to ensure that someone with a license is taking proper action in accordance with the license. There might be some sane legal argument on this ground for roadside checkpoints, rather than a naive “immediate harm vs immediate benefit” approach which neglects keeping tight reign on police power.
I don’t care. I was offering what I think is a good moral reason for my position here, not just jabbering about legal definitions.
You seriously believe there’s a strong resemblance between searching a person’s house for no good reason and giving them a breathalyzer test if they appear to be drunk? Or is this like your other crappy analogy with suicide rates?
I’m not following this, at all. I mean, “it’s not amazingly big… the number of suicides is bigger”. I’ll just point out there’s something very wrong with what you’ve said, and we can move on…
Anyway… yes! Yes, police checkpoints are an invasion of privacy. Well, someday we’ll all be able to call a google self driving car (I don’t work for google, I feel compelled to say at this point), drunk driving accidents will plummet, and we can dispense with all invasive options. Until then, we need to choose something middle of the road. I don’t understand how you see *any* such option as akin to living in East Germany. Surely, what you should be arguing for is, generally, far more oversight of the police (and not on pharyngula, where you’ll get unanimous agreement).
Privacy concerns. A properly conducted random breath test that returns a negative should mean the police get no information about me – not my name, license, they shouldn’t even record plate numbers as I drive through.
It is a completely different kettle of fish to metadata collection, which is very explicitly about collating information about private citizens, and so far has no evidence of adequate controls for storing and accessing that information, even if the collection itself could be justified.
I fail to see how you can’t see the glaring differences between your examples.
For starters, I don’t live in a country where handgun homicide incidence is anywhere near on par with drink driving fatalities. It’s not nearly as high on my radar, so I’ll give it some due consideration now.
Second, I was under the impression that 10,000 was for all firearms, and handguns represent about 3/4 of that total. Third, I’d need to see stats on how many of those fatalities occur in a public space and involved innocent bystanders – the people who are protected by breath tests.
Once we have that information I think we’ll find that the prospective benefits to the wider public have been reduced substantially – enough? I don’t know.
And finally, we’d need to give due consideration to the prevalence in particular areas and times, and ways to prevent inappropriate profiling and targeting in implementing this properly. Has the current stop and frisk policy accomplished that? No.
Aww shucks. Keep up that thinking thing, maybe one day I’ll be proud of what I started.
I’ve read about half this thread, and I guess I’m on the wrong side of the argument for many, but I’ve been harassed, had my car unlawfully searched, and even been threatened by far too many cops for me to be in favor of random checkpoints. Hell, I had a couple cops burst in my front door and point a loaded gun at my 7-year-old kid…..They were in the wrong house.
I’m in the U.S. I am totally opposed to drunk driving. I acknowledge it’s a real problem, and I don’t have all the answers. I demand my friends get a cab, and even pay for it myself when they’re inebriated. But on the other hand, fuck the police.
Oooo! Pizza! I’ll have to check on people yelling at me tomorrow.
@consciousness razor
I didn’t read the example as “forcing a Breathalyzer on someone who looks drunk as they get into the car”. The example given was “set up a check point with no regard as to whether a specific individual looks drunk”. Of course if someone looks drunk as they get into a car, that is probable cause. I am beginning to question your intellectual honesty for this discussion.
…
@Suido
I think you’re bringing an unresonable bias here. I see plenty of evidence that the current NSA / CIA program has sufficient oversight to protect our privacy on your standard. The evidence is the near complete lack of documented cases of abuse of this kind. Whereas, it’s trivial to find case after case of similar abuse happening at roadside sobriety checkpoints.
I also don’t buy offhand that we should be much more concerned with data collection than we should be about expanding search and seizure powers. I’m concerned about both.
Humans are not angels. If humans were angels, we would not need government. If humans were angels, we would not need limitations on police power. However, my understanding of human nature is that we are not angels, and power corrupts, and corruption is inevitable. The best we can do is structure our government and society to minimize the impacts of corruption, and constantly fight the weed as it eternally recovers.
If most humans were angels, I would see no problem with a full data collection on everyone to catch the few wayward angels. If most humans were angels, I would see no problem with allowing the police to search the homes of all close acquaintances of a murder victim on no additional cause to find incriminating evidence.
Everyone here seems to recognize that just magically adding “oversight” or “supervision” is insufficient to do away with the problems of the above two policies. Yet, many here seem to think that cops are angels, or that we have enough supervision and oversight, to allow cops to effectively search anyone they want in the context of driving and drunk driving. I am not impressed by the notion that it’s restricted to drivers of cars only when in our society that means almost everyone. I am not impressed by the notion that there are so many drunk driver deaths when you can do the calculus:
(benefit of roadside checkpoints)
/
(privacy impact + inconvenience of roadside checkpoints)
vs
(benefit of allowing purpose unrestricted search powers against acquaintances of murder victims)
/
(privacy impact and inconvenience of this policy)
I rather think that the second one fares far far better. Sure the number of murdered people is less, but I’m not doing a Dear Muslima. I’m looking at this proposed standard for every problem. We should be comparing the harms and benefits under this standard, and while the benefit is small because the number of murders is small, the number of people impacted is much smaller still because the police have already greatly narrowed down the pool of people impacted (close friends only).
Imagine how many more murders we could solve by just allowing the police to search the stuff of friends of murder victims, and the cost could be minimal – require that the police keep no records of their searches when no incriminating evidence is found.
The only remotely interesting argument I’ve heard thus far is the comparison to randomized building code inspections. I think a more compelling comparison is to randomized health code inspections. At some point in the near future, I need to do some research into the US legal history of health code inspections.
At this point, accidental I’m sure.
Yea, this is the kind of sentiment and argument I do not think I can accept. It’s throwing the doctrine of limited police powers under the bus as soon as slightly large problem appears and fearmongering kicks in. At no point in your calculus do you consider the inevitable outcome of police corruption, tyrannical tendencies of government, etc., and that is why I must disagree with you at least regarding some basic principles.
rabidwombat:
I, for one, don’t see a problem with anything you said. Such checkpoints should certainly be conducted in a different way than they are in much of the US now, if they’re going to be conducted at all, but getting rid of them entirely is a separate issue. There does need to be some way to prevent cops from abusing it (by defining what exactly they get to do and how and when) as well as make them accountable whenever abuses do unfortunately happen, but that sort of thing applies to any circumstances in which they’re enforcing a law.
Let me lay out what I had in mind in some more detail, before you start questioning my honesty. You stop people on the road. No great inconvenience. This is done in times and places in which the chances are high that some people in this traffic are driving drunk — the distribution of checks is thus not “random” over the set of all possible times/places. Very reasonable, I think. So, an officer walks up to a car and looks at what is plainly obvious (not searching it) about the car and the people in it, how they are behaving, if there are open containers, etc. Some non-intrusive questions may be asked to get a verbal response from the driver, to get some better audio/visual cues about their possible condition. If this individual then presents some substantial evidence of being drunk, that justifies a breath test which may or may not seal the deal. Only then do things like asking for licenses, car searches, checking for outstanding warrants, start happening. This person is otherwise just somebody you stopped on the road while knowing nothing incriminating about them, so you let them go without ever checking their fucking papers or anything else. If in your cursory inspection, you notice their break lights are out, etc., then you warn them but get back to the goal of the checkpoint which is looking for actual drunk drivers and discouraging them from ever showing up in the traffic in the first place.
Maybe I’ve left out a few details that are needed to make this work even better, but that is pretty close to what I had in mind.
The key factor about Australian booze buses that changed my mind is the complete lack of additional investigation. You blow then drive on. That’s a completely different interaction than any police interaction in the US which allows falr more opportunity for harassment.
PS: You have actually changed my mind. I don’t know about roadside sobriety checkpoints anymore. They’re clearly very close to the line, but now I don’t know how I feel about them. It’s a very similar feeling I have towards airport passenger screening.
Yeah, I really don’t know how expensive or time-consuming those are, assuming they were done on everybody at a checkpoint instead of after a “filter” inspection that I tried to describe. It can’t be much compared to the costs of drunk driving accidents, so in a lot of ways that does seem like a better option.
The thing is, these are public roads. You don’t have to “search” for crimes that are happening right in front of you in the public square, assuming these are not moving past you at 70mph and are thus hard to keep track of. But moving past you at 70mph is what makes it so dangerous and what makes it reasonable to simply stop them in some cases, so that you can get as a good a look at it as you’d get if the person were stationary and stabbing someone right in front of you.
The key problems in the US are the cultures of officer safety and testilying. Cops can put anyone they stop in handcuffs on the side of the road and ‘frisk’ them. They also routinely manufacture consent for invasive searches. That’s why I don’t want to empower them to detain any additional people.
@consciousness razor
(Out of order reply).
I don’t know how they do it where you live, but in California when I was pulled over at a roadside sobriety checkpoint (two occasions), the first thing they asked was for my license.
I already disagree.
I’m going to seem pretty radical here. Perhaps I am.
A general warrant is a legal term of several hundred years ago. Some officers of the British empire had general warrants, which amounted to giving them wide-ranging and unchecked power of search and seizure. For example, there is a (possibly ahistorical) story of a customs officer with a general warrant, in court on an unrelated matter, who retaliated against the judge by ordering a search of the judge’s house for contrabound, and did so openly and brazenly. AFAIK, general warrant power is precisely what the fourth amendment is intended to stop.
I don’t like giving police legal powers that a private citizen does not have. I have a kneejerk reaction against it. Now, we do do that, and sometimes I completely agree that it’s justified. For example, using sirens to bypass local traffic laws.
Now, a citizen’s arrest is still a thing, albeit practicely rarely and often unwisely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen%27s_arrest_in_the_United_States
Police do have wider arrest powers, and offhand I this is fine too.
However, I want to be careful that we do not stray close to giving police the power of a general warrant. That’s what the fourth amendment is intended to prevent.
By default, police power should not include the right to stop someone without cause, whether it’s at home, in a public restaurant, on the street, etc. It’s not legal for me to do it, and barring some other reason it should not be legal for a cop to do it. Otherwise, that sounds like the power of a general warrant to me.
Now, an interesting case is health code inspectors. They have quite wide-ranging search powers in terms of requiring no probable cause, but it is also quite restricted by applying only to very specific law violations. It’s like a general warrant in the sense of not describing the person or place to be searched and seized, but it is (perhaps) different than a general warrant in that it pertains to only a very, very small class of possible violations. Unlike a customs officer with a general warrant to find contraband.
Currently, the police do have the legal authority to pull over anyone and everyone at roadside sobriety checkpoints. It’s like a general warrant in the sense that it does not describe the person or places to be searched and seized. That’s not a good sign.
I also like the health code inspectors because it is provided for by statute explicitly – unlike roadside sobriety checkpoints AFAIK which were done by cops of their own volition and not under a specific law. (Is that correct? I think so. I need to research.) It would be better if this general warrant -like power was provided for in a specific statute.
Roadside sobriety checkpoints might be narrowly tailored to apply only for certain violations, just like health code inspectors. For example, if a health code inspector goes on premise and happens upon evidence of fraud, would that be admissible in court? Part of me hopes that the law would not allow evidence of violations outside the scope of the health code to be admissible. Similarly, I would like it better if roadside sobriety checkpoints were extremely limited in scope, and could not advance to other possible violations – unlike current practice AFAIK.
I also see a potential difference in that running a food business is sufficiently dangerous to require a health code license, and that allows for randomized inspections. One can make a similar argument that driving a car is sufficiently dangerous to require a driving license (duh), and that allows for randomized inspections. I like this argument – I really do – but I’m still working through if and how this rationale might be abused. I think as long as we can challenge in court whether some licensing scheme is required, and whether certain inspections are pertinent to compelling state interests, then it should be ok. For example, imagine what if the government required a license to walk around in high heels. I am pretty sure that it would be thrown out super fast (preferably under the ninth amendment, but probably under the fifth, fourteenth, or some shit). Also imagine a situation where they tried to pass a law which required anyone with a driver’s license to submit to randomized searches of all houses and possessions for fake license plates. I hope that wouldn’t pass constitutional muster either.
Finally, part of my gut reaction is probably also colored by the fact that it applies to public businesses and not to private people. I less like the idea that private citizens need to submit to government authority for everyday activity as opposed to a publicly operated business.
I’m advocating for a certain method, and you can’t tell me that I must be advocating for something else which I don’t support. Driving without a license isn’t so extraordinarily harmful in the various ways that drunk driving is, which is why I don’t support stopping people simply for that.
Yeah, you are. It is not great compared to the “inconvenience” of being killed or injured in an accident, or compared to the typical amount of property damage that results. If you care so much more about your freedom to move on the road without interruption at all times, your priorities are completely out of whack. There is nothing more to say.
And confusing yourself with these tenuous analogies and vague first principles is only getting you farther from understanding exactly what’s at stake and precisely how it’s different from the things you’re so worried about. That’s not what “consistency” looks like, just sophistry and stubborn contrarianism.
As I already said, there is plenty of good reason, and it isn’t a general warrant. You are making it possible for an officer to see crimes which are happening in the public. There is no searching, just the practical issue of making it observable. You might want to hide in plain sight while moving down the road, but your car is not in fact equipped with magic shielding that makes it non-public. It is simply equipped with an engine that makes it move, which means it’s harder to see exactly what’s going on inside. That’s why you make it stop. Just stop. That’s it. Then you merely look at it, as if it’s something that’s happening out in the public, because it in fact is happening in the public (even while it’s moving), not in the privacy of your home.
On occasion when driving from the U.S. to return home to Canada there’ll be a U.S. police checkpoint about 200 metres from the Canadian border. Not a fugitive watch or anything, the cops are apparently interested in how much money I’m carrying (the “over $10,000” thing).
I look white though, so they never keep me for long. But you know what, fuck them. There was no probable cause to stop me for anything. I’m leaving the U.S., and that’s still legal AFAIK, which makes me wonder if this isn’t the first step towards a U.S. version of the Stasi and a Berlin Wall of sorts.
@consciousness razor
Come now sir. It is definitely a seizure, and so this red herring of “hiding is public” is simply non-sequitur. Even SCOTUS agrees that a roadside sobriety checkpoint constitutes a seizure under the terms of the fourth amendment. The fourth amendment protects against both unreasonable searches and unreasonable seizures.
Further, arguably it is also a search to force a breathalyzer. IIRC SCOTUS is again with me on this point.
You are simply not using the terms honestly in accordance with the longstanding history of law of the United States.
If you think having a cop stop you in the US is no big deal, you’re white.
@consciousness razor
To continue:
I really hoped we were at least past this basic point. It upsets me greatly that you’re just now trying to pull the bullshit that roadside sobriety checkpoints are not searches nor seizures.
Further:
Again, this is exactly what Franklin meant by:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
You just don’t recognize the dangers of a police state. To quote qwints, it’s probably because you’re (probably) white. You’ve never been on the receiving end of police brutality or injustice, and only because of that can you say something so unwise that we should sacrifice our essential liberty for some temporary safety.
Sure, it’s only a minor inconvenience today. I’m not making a slippery slope argument. I’m not arguing that this will lead to future legal changes. I’m arguing that it is the bottom of the slope.
Using your standard – I fail to see how it might be construed as unreasonable for police to search all of the homes of friends of a murder victim without further cause. We know that 95%+ (IIRC) of murder victims knew the murderer personally, which already makes for much better probabilities than the hypotheticals being bandied about here concerning streets near drinking districts and roadside sobriety checkpoints. Yet I hope we would all cringe at allowing the police to do those warrant-less suspicion-less searches of houses of friends of the murder victim. That is what is implied by your legal logic. This is not some contrarian or pedant move. This is the real legal consequences of thinking like that.
Presumably, these are actual roadside sobriety checkpoints in the US, which aren’t necessarily anything like those in Australian system, nor are they like the sort I was dreaming up. Right? What cases are you talking about anyway? And even if it does still fit in some very narrow sense in legalese, what the fuck is “unreasonable” about it? And if they were, why hasn’t the SCOTUS decided that they’re unconstitutional on those grounds? Did you just forget to mention that, or did you remember that it’s inconvenient?
Talk about non sequiturs…
I’m being entirely honest, and I’m trying to use such terms coherently. SCOTUS doesn’t tend to give a fuck whether their rulings are good for people or whether they’re even coherent. And I’m no lawyer, nor am I lecturing to you about the history of law in the US. And the system we have in the US sucks as it is now. I think we could agree on all of those points.
So, how exactly is the sort of procedure I outlined supposed to be a problem? You were saying you’re almost there. What the fuck is left? Do you know, and if so, will you spell it out, without droning on about some other imagined scenario which doesn’t resemble the one in question?
Are they driving these homes down a public road at 70 mph, while they’re intoxicated? No? Then you’re not even thinking about my standard at all.
@EnlightenmentLiberal
The Supreme Court of Canada disagrees with you. They say RIDE stops are not searches or seizures (but are arbitrary detentions, which it allows as a reasonable limit).
Americans are weird.
If the only options to combat it are worse than what we’re trying to combat, then no, we should not do something.
Being required to blow into a machine to ascertain your blood-alcohol level is NOT worse than a drunk driver causing death and/or serious bodily harm on the highways.
@Ibis3
What does Canada have to do about it? In the United States, for the purposes of fourth amendment law, detentions are a kind of seizure – a seizure of the person. This is … should be … quite basic legal definitions.
@consciousness razor
As above.
Any sort of roadside sobriety checkpoint presumably involves the police ordering you to not leave until you complete some tasks or they complete some tasks. Otherwise known as a detention. Otherwise known as a seizure for the purposes of fourth amendment law.
I do not think that flagrantly ignoring the constitution to create an otherwise good law is itself not a good idea. I like the rule of law, and the rule of law and the constitutional protections are the only thing standing between me and Christian theocracy. There are plenty of Christians who would also love to pass some laws which in their opinion are common sense and clearly beneficial to the community, but they have this pesky problem of being contrary to the constitution.
The constitution is not sacrosanct. We can change it, and I can list off half a dozen amendments that I would love to see done. However, the proper time for passing a law contrary to the constitution is after amending the constitution, not before.
Not only are you ignorant of the law, but you are proudly proclaiming your ignorance and taking pride in that ignorance by attacking my positions as “legalese”. It’s people like me and the ACLU who protect your rights. Nothing infuriates me faster than gleeful willful ignorance. Screw you.
qwints: >blockquote cite=””> If you think having a cop stop you in the US is no big deal, you’re white.
Is it weird that this sentence by itself pretty much swayed my opinion on the issue? I don’t know why, but this was the hammer blow that really struck the whole thing home for me.
I’m supposed to be what now? I think that what the law says doesn’t tell us whether or not the law is wrong. If that’s a problem (when I claim it, but not you apparently), then have fun arguing in circles with yourself and accomplishing nothing but defending the status quo.
But a proper definition should fit the actual world, which doesn’t happen automatically or by fiat, besides which my main point was that some such definition still doesn’t answer how it’s supposed to be unreasonable, in accordance with the actual fourth amendment not the bullshit version of it you tried to slide past me while pretending to be so knowledgeable and concerned about it. I think that should be clear enough, for anyone else who actually bothers to read my comment for comprehension and with some sense of honesty.
Get the fuck over yourself.
What are those cases I asked for, which you vaguely hinted at? And specifically, what is the SCOTUS interpretation of the fourth amendment on this question, compared to yours? Are they also proudly and gleefully and willfully ignorant of the law, compared to you, just like I am?
And generally, do you have nothing specific at all to say about the tiny little inkling of a bad feeling in your gut that you sorta-maybe have about this, and that’s why you didn’t respond directly to any of my questions, but instead spewed out more useless garbage?
We are a deeply conservative people in a country created in liberalism. Yet it is only patriotic conservatives who feel compelled or entitled to claim our liberal origins. So, yes, we are weird.
@consciousness razor 464? I think?
I can actually think of several factors that would greatly reduce the problems, both dui and horrible cops. Significant increase in public transportation infrastructure would reduce the need to drive (and be helpful for many other reasons.) And holding police accountable would reduce the tyranny of corrupt cops.
Unfortunately , this has been such a dismal month for social justice, both nationally, and for me personally, that I currently have zero hope either of those things will ever fucking happen.
Hopefully I get my optimism mojo back soon.
DUI checkpoints stop everyone travelling on a particular road at a particular time; therefore there’s no profiling and they are legal.
@487
It’s absurd to insist there’s no profiling because they “stop everyone.” Profiling doesn’t end the moment the car stops. The entire interaction and outcome between the officers and the driver is affected by racial attitudes.
Wrong. The cops don’t stop everyone, just those they suspect are driving with an expired license, have outstanding warrants, driving with expired registration, possess illegal drugs, and, rarely, those who might be intoxicated. They catch relatively few drunks.
In case any libertarians are still lurking on this thread, here’s Dawkins on why evolution is not a good model for society to be built on:
This is why Luke’s comment at #304 is so bad. It’s a naturalistic fallacy to think that evolution is a scientific and therefore good basis for how to govern society. Also, sociopathic. That’s a bad thing.