What Bill of Rights?!?!?!

[American Patriot]

Current administration is:

Going after the right to keep and bear arms.

Going after religion (especially Christianity).

Going after reporters' rights to speak freely.

Going after Americans and KILLING them without ANY due process....


and this (6th Amendment)?

After 2 years behind bars without trial, N.M. man to get $15.5 million

Photos provided by the Dona Ana County Sheriff's Department in New Mexico show Stephen Slevin at the time of his arrest on suspicion of driving while intoxicated in August 2005, left, and shortly before being released from solitary confinement in May 2007. (Associated Press)

By Marisa Gerber March 8, 2013, 6:30 a.m.

A New Mexico man who spent nearly two years behind bars without trial will receive a $15.5-million settlement because a federal jury decided that his rights to adequate medical attention and due process had been violated.
During the time Stephen Slevin, 58, spent in solitary confinement at Doña Ana County Detention Center, his mental and physical health deteriorated so severely that he spent hours on end rocking back and forth beneath a blanket, his attorney told the Los Angeles Times. Slevin even wiggled a tooth loose so he could yank it out, Matt Coyte said.
“They treated him in a manner that was inhumane,” he said. “They treated him worse than an animal.”
Slevin's legal troubles began in August 2005, when he was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and driving a stolen car -- a vehicle he says he borrowed from a friend. Slevin also suffered from depression and alcoholism, Coyte said.
Authorities soon put Slevin in solitary confinement. He scrawled his symptoms -- panic attacks, shakes, trouble sleeping -- and his pleas for help on little pieces of paper and gave them to jail employees, Coyte said.
No help came, and by the beginning of 2006, Slevin had stopped asking. By then, he had spiraled into delirium, Coyte said.
“Solitary confinement does drive you nuts,” the attorney said. “He was no longer able to advocate for himself.”
Slevin's sister, who lives out of state, called the jail several times to try to get her brother help, to no avail, Coyte said.
After about a year and a half, officials sent Slevin to a psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas, N.M., court documents show. He weighed 133 pounds and his nearly 6-foot frame was covered in bedsores and fungus, according to his court complaint. Stringy, long hair flowed over his unkempt white beard.
After two weeks of medical attention and human interaction, Slevin was “almost back to being a normal human being,” Coyte said.
In May 2007, about a month before his release from custody, Slevin was returned to solitary confinement at the Doña Ana County jail, court documents show. The reason is unclear.
Prosecutors eventually decided Slevin was incompetent to stand trial and dropped the charges, Coyte said.
“He was a pretrial detainee the entire time,” the attorney said. “He was never convicted.”
County spokesman Jess Williams told The Times that the offices of then-Dist. Atty. Susana Martinez, who is now governor, and the public defender were responsible for the extended timetable. The Third Judicial District attorney’s office didn’t return a call for comment, but in an interview after the jury verdict last year, then-Dist. Atty. Amy Orlando told ABC-7 that the duration of detention in Levin’s case was not unique.
"Twenty-two months [in a detention center] for someone who has possible mental health issues is not unreasonable at all,” she said. “Because we can't just say, 'Go back out on the streets.' They need treatment, they need help.’”
And if they are incompetent to assist in their own defense, they cannot be brought to trial.
For Coyte, that reasoning doesn't suffice.
“Does that excuse them for treating him the way they did, just because the legal system takes a long time?” he said. “No, it does not.”
After Slevin's release in 2007, he reached out to several local attorneys, including Coyte, who took the case to federal court.
A federal jury in Santa Fe decided last year that jail warden Christopher Barela had violated Slevin’s rights to humane conditions and adequate medical attention and had deprived him of due process, according to a verdict form the panel filled out.

[vector7]

Where's the Bible?

No God given or Bill of Rights...

Brennan takes oath on draft Constitution—without Bill of Rights

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 14 hrs ago


Vice President Joe Biden swears in CIA Director John Brennan at the White House, March 8, 2013. (David Lienemann/Official …

Oh, dear. This is probably not the symbolism the White House wanted.

Hours after CIA Director John Brennan took the oath of office—behind closed doors, far away from the press, perhaps befitting his status as America's top spy—the White House took pains to emphasize the symbolism of the ceremony.

“There's one piece of this that I wanted to note for you,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at their daily briefing. “Director Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution that had George Washington's personal handwriting and annotations on it, dating from 1787.”

Earnest said Brennan had asked for a document from the National Archives that would demonstrate the U.S. is a nation of laws.

"Director Brennan told the president that he made the request to the archives because he wanted to reaffirm his commitment to the rule of law as he took the oath of office as director of the CIA,” Earnest said.

The Constitution itself went into effect in 1789. But troublemaking blogger Marcy Wheeler points out that what was missing from the Constitution in 1787 is also quite symbolic: The Bill of Rights, which did not officially go into effect until December 1791 after ratification by states. (Caution: Marcy's post has some strong language.)

That means: No freedom of speech and of the press, no right to bear arms, no Fourth Amendment ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and no right to a jury trial.

How ... symbolic?

[American Patriot]

Here's another lesson. They play games with different parts of the Bill of Rights. They just don't agree with some of it.


Ted Cruz gets a scolding - not an answer
Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Updated 10:34 pm, Tuesday, March 19, 2013

(Picture deleted, I'm sick of looking at Medusa)

FILE - In this Feb. 25, 2013 file photo, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. Feinstein, the sponsor of a proposed assault weapons ban says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has told her that the ban will not be part of the initial gun control measure the Senate will debate next month. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, Associated Press


Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California wants us to know that she is "not a sixth-grader."

Anyone who saw the recent exchange before the Senate Judiciary Committee between Feinstein and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas over guns and the Constitution might speculate that the reason she said this is because she couldn't pass the entrance exam.

As for Cruz, a friend of mine for a decade, it turns out that the most important of the "Senate rules" is unwritten: Thou shalt not embarrass a fellow senator - even one in the opposing party - by making him or her look unprepared, uneducated or uninformed.

That's not always an easy thing to avoid. The rulebook doesn't say what to do when a Senate colleague who wants to ban certain guns dodges a tough question and then goes on the attack - thus embarrassing herself.

Nevertheless, Cruz, 42, is headed to the principal's office. His infraction was asking the right question. What Cruz wanted to know was this: Why do liberals cherish the First and Fourth Amendments, but trash the one in between - the Second Amendment?

That's a brainteaser. Why does the left play favorites with different parts of the Bill of Rights?

Experience teaches that the better the question, the less likely you are to get a straight answer.

That's what happened here. Feinstein went on the offense. Abandoning reason for emotion, she scolded Cruz for daring to "lecture" her. After all, she said, she had seen the bodies of people killed by gunfire.

She was referring to the assassinations of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone in 1978. Feinstein obviously feels very passionate about limiting people's access to guns. But who says she gets to decide who gets to own a gun or how many stay on the market?

Enter Cruz. The freshman senator is forcing the Washington establishment - people in both parties - to think. And oh, how they dislike him for it.

Before his election to the Senate, Cruz - who was solicitor general of Texas - built a reputation as one of the best litigators and constitutional lawyers in the country.

What Feinstein, 79, has is a conviction that she - like many liberals - cares more about the victims of gun violence than everyday Americans possibly could.

Ironically, Feinstein told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that she felt the Texan was "arrogant."

Look who's talking. Arrogant is when a person feels so imperial that she doesn't think that she should have to put up with questions from a colleague.

So what, pray tell, does Feinstein have going for her? Experience. She's been in the Senate for 20 years. Is this how the game is played? You don't become an expert in a subject and then go onto a Senate committee. It's the other way around. Feinstein acknowledged during the exchange with Cruz that, while she feels perfectly comfortable making laws, she herself is "not a lawyer."

If this were you or me, that fact might deter us from arguing the law and the Constitution with someone who has argued both before the Supreme Court nine times.

Which might lead us to ask the senator from California: "Are you smarter than a sixth-grader?"

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/navarr...#ixzz2O6UGvzdk