News:

Testimonial: "Yeah, wasn't expecting it. Near shat myself."

Main Menu

The Fourth Amendment makes a comeback...

Started by LMNO, June 26, 2009, 12:55:00 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

LMNO

...They can take our underwear, but they can never take our FREEDOM!

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/08-479.pdf

"Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they strip-searched her on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The decision put school districts on notice that such searches are "categorically distinct'' from other efforts to combat illegal drugs."


http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/06/26/strip_search_of_student_illegal_high_court_rules/

Cain

Quote from: IOZConsider the logic of it. On the one hand, schoolchildren are so extremely vulnerable, so easily damaged, so fragile, suggestible, damageable, flimsy, and corruptible that we cannot even allow them to be exposed to aspirin or cough drops. On the other, hauling a child in front of adults, compelling her to strip, and forcing her to behave in a thoroughly degrading manner is no big deal, mere embarrassment; she'll get over it; kids are resilient. Has there ever been any society, ever, in the history of the world, that has devoted so much of its genius to the production of such thoroughly incomprehensible and inconsistent standards, such nonsensical cultural attitudes? It's like our one true native art.

Kai

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

LMNO

Wow, that was awesome.  What's the url?

Cain

#4
whoisioz.blogspot.com

For an anarchist/minarchist, he's pretty funny. Also some of his recipes are very nice indeed.

Oh, he also said this:

Quote
Quote"This is where you have to look at the totality of the circumstances in the case," says Matthew Wright, lawyer for the school district.

When asked whether such an extensive search made sense for a pill that is the equivalent of two Advil, Wright says school officials cannot have known these were the only pills.

"With hindsight and with calm reflection, we can look back and say, 'OK, what kind of danger really was there on campus?'" Wright says. "But when you're on the ground making on-the-spot decisions, you don't have that luxury. School administrators are not pharmacologically trained in being able to assess the relative dangers any one drug might present, but what they are charged with is to make sure that students are kept safe from such threats of danger."

-Morning Edition on NPR

I like this line of argument and plan to use it at work. "Well, boss, with hindsight and calm reflection I should not have have pulled the fire alarm and started throwing elderly trustees out the window, but I was on the ground making on-the-spot decisions, and I didn't have that luxury."

I am not on principle opposed to the idea that the exigencies of certain circumstances dictate that we respond without long reflection. Situational ethics and all that. From time to time, all of us are called to act within the constraints of a too short time frame, or on imperfect or incomplete information. And all of us act all the time without the benefit of hindsight, which is a tautology, but a useful one.

As an attorney arguing that exigent circumstances forced more precipitous action than was desirable in retrospect, however, it is best not to craft an argument that makes your clients sound like monstrous, ignorant dumbasses. Arguing that school officials, for instance, have an unfettered right to search any student's body and person at any time and with any degree of invasiveness because they have no fucking idea what it is they're looking for nor reason to believe that the student in question possesses this ineffable quantity seems to me like a loser, even given your Scalias and such.

Shouldn't we be astonished at just how thoroughly the language of safety, security, and control have overtaken the language of teaching and instruction in the mouths of pedagogues? Schools are drug-free zones, where students are protected from violence, where bullying is not tolerated, one strike and you're out, etc. etc. Whatever happened to the three Rs?

UPDATE: Aaaaaand nevermind. Drugsrbad. Thanks.

Oh, and this:

QuoteYo, someone should explain to the WaPo that senior school officials as senior administrators have a fiduciary relationship to their organizations that makes them legally responsible and liable when their shit is breakin' the law, breakin' the law, especially when they themselves directed the school to do so.

Also, just for shits, how fucking tawdry and prurient is it to take to the nation's second major editorial page to argue for the dire necessity of stripping thirteen-year-old girls?

Richter

Fucked.

What did they hope to prevent or protect the other children from?  Getting rid of a headache and minor liver damage?    

Quote from: Cain on June 26, 2009, 01:09:18 PM
whoisioz.blogspot.com

For an anarchist/minarchist, he's pretty funny. Also some of his recipes are very nice indeed.

Oh, he also said this:

Quote
Quote"This is where you have to look at the totality of the circumstances in the case," says Matthew Wright, lawyer for the school district.

When asked whether such an extensive search made sense for a pill that is the equivalent of two Advil, Wright says school officials cannot have known these were the only pills.

"With hindsight and with calm reflection, we can look back and say, 'OK, what kind of danger really was there on campus?'" Wright says. "But when you're on the ground making on-the-spot decisions, you don't have that luxury. School administrators are not pharmacologically trained in being able to assess the relative dangers any one drug might present, but what they are charged with is to make sure that students are kept safe from such threats of danger."

-Morning Edition on NPR

I like this line of argument and plan to use it at work. "Well, boss, with hindsight and calm reflection I should not have have pulled the fire alarm and started throwing elderly trustees out the window, but I was on the ground making on-the-spot decisions, and I didn't have that luxury."

I am not on principle opposed to the idea that the exigencies of certain circumstances dictate that we respond without long reflection. Situational ethics and all that. From time to time, all of us are called to act within the constraints of a too short time frame, or on imperfect or incomplete information. And all of us act all the time without the benefit of hindsight, which is a tautology, but a useful one.

As an attorney arguing that exigent circumstances forced more precipitous action than was desirable in retrospect, however, it is best not to craft an argument that makes your clients sound like monstrous, ignorant dumbasses. Arguing that school officials, for instance, have an unfettered right to search any student's body and person at any time and with any degree of invasiveness because they have no fucking idea what it is they're looking for nor reason to believe that the student in question possesses this ineffable quantity seems to me like a loser, even given your Scalias and such.

Shouldn't we be astonished at just how thoroughly the language of safety, security, and control have overtaken the language of teaching and instruction in the mouths of pedagogues? Schools are drug-free zones, where students are protected from violence, where bullying is not tolerated, one strike and you're out, etc. etc. Whatever happened to the three Rs?

UPDATE: Aaaaaand nevermind. Drugsrbad. Thanks.

Oh, and this:

QuoteYo, someone should explain to the WaPo that senior school officials as senior administrators have a fiduciary relationship to their organizations that makes them legally responsible and liable when their shit is breakin' the law, breakin' the law, especially when they themselves directed the school to do so.

Also, just for shits, how fucking tawdry and prurient is it to take to the nation's second major editorial page to argue for the dire necessity of stripping thirteen-year-old girls?

[satyrical ] If they were going to employ such logic with precedent set by the Bush admininstration, they should have sent the Army into her underwear.  [/satyrical]
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on May 22, 2015, 03:00:53 AM
Anyone ever think about how Richter inhabits the same reality as you and just scream and scream and scream, but in a good way?   :lulz:

Friendly Neighborhood Mentat

Cainad (dec.)

God damn! I would pull my kid out of that school in a heartbeat and encourage all the other parents to do the same.

Bruno

We had a similar fiasco at my old elementary school a few years ago. The same woman was still the principal as when I went there many years ago. Needless to say, my views on disciplinary techniques differed from hers at the time.

Anyway, local courts ruled that her actions were legal and justified, and my childhood perceptions of "The Systemtm" were vindicated.
Formerly something else...

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Strip-searches of children are fucking unreal. I'm glad the court ruled it unconstitutional.

And, I mean, fucking IBUPROFEN. I can't believe a girl can't even carry a packet of Midol around anymore. Schools need to stop "protecting" kids and get back to teaching them.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Sir Squid Diddimus

Honestly it sounds like bullying. Also wanting to see a 13 yr old naked.
They sound like sick fucks.

If it were my daughter...

Richter

Quote from: Nigel on June 26, 2009, 03:51:27 PM
Strip-searches of children are fucking unreal. I'm glad the court ruled it unconstitutional.

And, I mean, fucking IBUPROFEN. I can't believe a girl can't even carry a packet of Midol around anymore. Schools need to stop "protecting" kids and get back to teaching them.

I get the sense there's some unrealistic pressure on the schools to supply this level of "safety".  You can't allow someone any measure control over their behavior and at the same time force that behavior to be safe.  It is possible that people will do stupid things and get hurt.  They may hurt someone else.  Even prisons can't totally control and gaurantee that their inmates will be totally safe and perectly behaved, and enforcing that same kind of control on a school is insane.

Stupid behavior is the one thing I'd define as an "unalienable right".  If you're lucky and smart, you get to learn from it, but you can't prevent it from happening.  

Quote from: Eater of Clowns on May 22, 2015, 03:00:53 AM
Anyone ever think about how Richter inhabits the same reality as you and just scream and scream and scream, but in a good way?   :lulz:

Friendly Neighborhood Mentat

LMNO

Of course, this also means that 14-year-old girls will now be free to hide drugs in their panties.

PopeTom

Quote from: LMNO on June 26, 2009, 04:56:16 PM
Of course, this also means that 14-year-old girls will now be free to hide drugs in their panties.

If we could package these 14 y/o girl's panty drugs and ship them to Japan we'd make millions!
-PopeTom

I am the result of 13.75 ± 0.13 billion years of random chance. Now that I exist I see no reason to start planning and organizing everything in my life.

Random dumb luck got me here, random dumb luck will get me to where I'm going.

Hail Eris!

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Nigel on June 26, 2009, 03:51:27 PM
Strip-searches of children are fucking unreal. I'm glad the court ruled it unconstitutional.

And, I mean, fucking IBUPROFEN. I can't believe a girl can't even carry a packet of Midol around anymore. Schools need to stop "protecting" kids and get back to teaching them.

They're protecting themselves.  From lawsuits.

That's what the zero tolerance shit is all about.

And how's that working for you, administrators?   :lulz:
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Sir Squid Diddimus