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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:35
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Seeing as how, I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and an amateur lobbyist for its UT branch (the TX legislature is currently meeting, so we go to the capitol to harrass legislators wrt proposed laws), of course. 
As for this specific law, the sex offenders have already been sentenced, and have already served their time. Like mandatory minimums and three strikes laws, taking discretion in sentencing away from judges and juries hearing specific circumstances, and imposing rediculously broad punishments through legislatures is wrong.
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:35
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quote:
Because, firstly, child molestation is a Type 1 Felony (usually) and type 1 felonies do NOT carry the punishment of life in jail. Only murder has that punishment. Even rape doesn't fall under 'life in jail'. |
So why is it anti-libertarian to support life in jail or a combination of jail and less restrictive access to society than jail affords? You're arguing about what the sentence is now, so what? I'm arguing about what the sentence should be in the future and if that sentence is constitutional.
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Therefore, it is not in exchange for not keeping them in jail for life. |
They would get life if I had my way, but my compromise would be early release in exchange for a life with fewer restrictions.
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I think most courts would consider life in jail for one child molestation (that did not result in death) not to proportional, just as using the death penalty for rapists was decided to be non-proportional. |
Life in jail would be light compared to what they'd get if caught in the act, therefore what most courts say doesn't impress me.
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Secondly, the way it works is that they serve the full 20 years (who is letting a child molester out early?) and then they have additional penalties put upon them. The localities say, oh that isn't a punishment that falls under the statutory maximum. It'd be like someone serving their entire maximum for drunk driving and then being told they couldn't buy alcohol for the next 10 years. |
Which violates ex post facto, we're debating whether or not it is unconstitutional to sentence molesters the way I have described - the answer is no.
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Then it needs to be a part of sentencing. The community doesn't get to just tack on conditions as it sees fit. |
I haven't said otherwise.
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Oerdin
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of Internet Music.
Sep 2001
time: 21:35
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The ACLU's official policy is to not interfer with law enforcement or to help people breaking American law in any way and that's a good policy. The problem is certain ACLU activists have taken it upon themselves to hinder law enforcement and to attempt to help people break American law. That's not good.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/ACLU,_M..._of_misbehavior
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April 17, 2005
Grey Deacon, a spokesman of the Minuteman Project, told the "Worldnet RadioActive" show in an exclusive interview on April 14 that representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union are now criminally involved in helping illegal entrants cross the US border and avoid detection. He alleges that the ACLU activists are making noise and flashing lights to alert potential illegals to move on to a non-patrolled area of the border.
"The ACLU's position is that illegal aliens have a right to enter our border and stay in this country as long as they want," said Deacon. "That's what one of the leaders of the group told me personally."
These allegations exist despite the ACLU's officially stated position of not directly interfering with the Minutemen's activities. The ACLU's press release of March 30 affirmed that the participation of ACLU members would be strictly limited to being "neutral observers" and "recorders", not "participants", according to ACLU of Arizona Board President Stan Furman, a former Arizona State Senator.
"We recognize the right of a country to defend its borders," said Eleanor Eisenberg, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona, "but it must be done by the proper authorities and in a humane way," suggesting that the primary concern on the ACLU in interacting with the Minuteman Project was to prevent violence.
The ACLU also quotes prior allegations against the group that sponsors the Minutemen, writing that they are "alleged to have engaged in activities that go beyond First Amendment-protected activity and that is intended to intimidate, harass or otherwise interfere with the rights of others." |
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:35
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I'm sorry, Berz. But the structure of our government was intended that the legislatures legislate and the courts interpret the law when a case is before them. What the ACLU is doing is trying to change the fundamentals of our legal system by legislating using the judiciary under the long ago discredited doctrine of substantive due process employing the so-called "right of privacy." The Supremes themselves recognized the fundamental problem with substantive due process when they "officially" buried the constitutional principle only two years before Griswold. They said that when a legislature decides, that that is substantive due process per se. The only question then is whether the legislation is constitutional under other provisions or whether there has been a denial of "procedural" due process in a particular case. |
The right of privacy comes from the 4th Amendment, it was a given for the Framers that we had a right to privacy, the 4th Amendment merely allows government to infringe upon this right in certain cases and the procedure to be followed. Y'all need to read the 9th Amendment and you will see the Bill of Rights was not meant to be an encyclopedic listing of our rights.
Privacy is among the most basic of rights, you'll notice we have no right to life in the Bill of Rights, its a given just like privacy and freedom. And in the 5th Amendment we see our lives can be taken by the state under certain circumstances after following procedure. Both rights are assumed to exist and the BOR affirms they exist by detailing how these rights may be restricted under the right conditions.
Alexander Hamilton argued against a Bill of Rights, he said the Constitution limits what the government can do so why fall into the trap of enumerating certain rights thereby lowering the value of all the other rights we have. He was right, by listing certain rights alot of people in this country behave like the rest of our rights are state-created.
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:35
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I am not going to debate here whether "the right to privacy," first recognized as a right in Brandeis' law review article written in 1890, IIRC, is a fundamental right that is recognized by the constiution. It may be an aspect of liberty. But it was not recognized at all at the time of the founding of our country. Liberty was, though.
But the problem his not whether this right exists or not. The problem is substantive due process where the Supremes make policy judgements about whether this or that law infringes on their own notions of privacy, and then declares the law unconstitutional if they don't like it -- or come up with dramatic court orders, as we found in Roe v. Wade, to lay out elaborate new law in the place of the laws it just vacated.
For generations, the Supremes did just this to economic social legislation under the freedom to contract aspect of Liberty, until FDR threatened to pack the court. That era fell into heavy constitutional criticism. Finally the Supremes flatly said that the whole concept of substantive due process was constitutionally flawed as it amounted to substituting their judgements about law and policy for that of Congress or the State legislatures.
So they junked it.
Then, two years later, it was back in Griswold, but this time it was the right of privacy (aspect of liberty) that was the basic right infringed according to their notions. That ruling has launched the court in to being the superlegislature, and subject to just as much hostility and criticism as before.
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27-04-2005 05:20
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