We Need An Addition To The Bill of Rights

[ThomWV]

Look at the trend ...

We need an addition to our basic Constitutional rights. We need to be protected from preemptive arrest; arrest for an existing crime not committed, arrest for a crime that a person might commit.

It should be at the Constitutional foundation of our law that no person can be arrested or detained for something they might do in the future.

[spanone]

1. i'd settle for UPHOLDING the bill of rights.

[mcscajun]

3. Same here. If we had a President committed to upholding his oath

to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" rather than one who just thinks of it as just some quaint relic, "just a god-damned piece of paper" we wouldn't be in a position to have to think about adding amendments to protect our liberties.

:grr:

[SteelPenguin]

7. I forget who it was

I think it was on Bill Maher, where someone said that the President's job isn't to protect and defend American lives, but to protect and defend the constitution, and when you give up our rights to protect our lives you're breaking your oath.

Give me liberty or give me death. That used to mean something in this country. Now too many people in our country are enthralled, to this day, with a group of people who want to take away as many of our freedoms as possible.

[SteelPenguin]

2. Actually I agree with this

It's already happening, particularly in civil court. That woman in Minnesota who lost to the RIAA for 'file sharing' even though they never even attempted to prove she shared the file with anyone. She simply had the potential to share it, therefore she lost. That's a bad precident.

The whole preemptive mindset of the current Administration has leaked down to change core American values and I hate it.

I would amend this to being free from not just premptive arrest for a potential crime, but wrap in protection against genetic discrimination, and freedom of our physical bodies, protecting our own most personal information as private, not allowing anyone to base anything on it, nor being able to tell us what we can or can't do with our bodies (from tracking implants to abortions...nobody has a right to know what you do or have done, or could do with your body).

[JTFrog]

4. Scary you should say this.

I just re-watched Minority Report this weekend.

[CT_Progressive]

5. Ummmmmm, no.

First of all, Minority Report was fictional.

Second, there is a valid crime called "Conspiracy to commit (X)". Many people have been legitimately convicted of this crime, and I'm all for that.

[SteelPenguin]

6. Conspiracy is different from potential

Conspiracy to commit convictions rely on actual planning, obtaining raw materials, building necessary equipment, having plans, and almost always confessional information, or some sort of wiretap with the person talking about commiting the crime.

The whole aspect of potential is not Minority Report. It's very real. We're still holding people in Guantanamo who have commmited no crime, acted in no way against the United States, but are being held because of the feeling that if released they WOULD do something, particularly after being held for years in brutal conditions by us.

That's not Conspiracy to Commit. That's bullshit.

Yes, it's not American citizens, and it's not on American soil...

The problem is 'potential' is what they're now able to arrrest people on. Based on these new laws they can just say 'terrorist' and without even the evidence to try someone for Conspiracy they can hold them indefinately. If that isn't a basis for this type of law I don't know what is.