New York top-ranking government officials - Governor Cuomo and Attorney General Schneiderman (who fund-raised for Hillary Clinton and obviously was promised a position in her administration) are adamantly anti-Trump-anything.
No matter what the President does, right or wrong, they are against it.
Yet, New York now tries to stealthily impose upon its own residents the very same invasions of privacy that the Trump administration is using to check incoming foreigners: warrantless access to cell phones.
New York Legislature is reviewing a bill that would allow police officers, under the guise of fighting with texting-while-driving, to get access to your cell phone without a search warrant, in obvious violation of the 4th Amendment, and that will impose penalties upon drivers who refuse such access to officers - well, how can you refuse is not clear if the officer can simply overpower you, take your cell phone and scan it.
With the only difference that the U.S. Constitution is inapplicable to aliens outside the borders of the U.S. (including airport immigration areas before entry is allowed), while warrantless searches of New Yorkers well within the borders of the U.S. is definite violation of the 4th Amendment.
The cause to scrap the 4th Amendment is, of course, lofty - protecting motorists and passengers, and pedestrians from "distracted drivers".
But, the 4th Amendment universally applies to all, even murderers.
Whether you consider it fair or not, a body found in a trunk of a car during an illegal warrantless search is subject to suppression, possibly freeing the murderer.
That's how the U.S. Constitution works.
And it does not work differently for "distracted drivers".
My concern though is not about the fate of distracted drivers, but about all drivers, because police officers habitually lie under oath to fabricate "probable cause" to stop a car and arrest the driver and everybody in the car, as well as to search everybody and everything in sight.
So, it is reasonable to predict that now, when everybody has cell phones, especially when driving, and every phone, smart or "dumb", has texting capabilities, a police officer will be able to stop without a probable cause ANY car at ANY time, claiming that he saw the driver texting or attempting to text. For an attempt you do not even need proof that a text was entered - the driver was simply attempting to do so, but did not complete his evil goal because the noble officer stopped him.
And, the police now can easily get any information on your cell phones in order to investigate you or charge you with crimes, without any warrants, by just claiming that they saw you look at that phone while driving - which is their word against yours, and guess who will win in court.
The bill is a rampant scrapping of the 4th Amendment for motorists altogether, as well as of their privacy, and as such, is blatantly unconstitutional.
So, do New Yorkers now have to videotape themselves, non-stop, to prove a negative against allegations of police officers, that they DID NOT text while drive?
THE EVOLUTION OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY IN THE UNITED STATES:
"If the judges interpret the laws themselves, and suffer none else to interpret, they may easily make, of the laws, [a shredded] shipman's hose!" - King James I of England, around 1616.
“No class of the community ought to be allowed freer scope in the expression or publication of opinions as to the capacity, impartiality or integrity of judges than members of the bar. They have the best opportunities of observing and forming a correct judgment. They are in constant attendance on the courts. Hundreds of those who are called on to vote never enter a court-house, or if they do, it is only at intervals as jurors, witnesses or parties. To say that an attorney can only act or speak on this subject under liability to be called to account and to be deprived of his profession and livelihood by the very judge or judges whom he may consider it his duty to attack and expose, is a position too monstrous to be entertained for a moment under our present system,” Justice Sharwood in Ex Parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Pa 220, 238-39 (1880).
“This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that [the rejected attorney candidate] has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar. It shows not only that [the rejected attorney candidate] has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost.
It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.” In Re Anastaplo, 18 Ill. 2d 182, 163 N.E.2d 429 (1959), cert. granted, 362 U.S. 968 (1960), affirmed over strong dissent, 366 U.S. 82 (1961), Justice Black, Chief Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, dissenting.
" I do not believe that the practice of law is a "privilege" which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government”. Lathrop v Donohue, 367 US 820 (1961), Justice Black, dissenting.
"The legal profession must take great care not to emulate the many occupational groups that have managed to convert licensure from a sharp weapon of public defense into blunt instrument of self-enrichment". Walter Gellhorn, "The Abuse of Occupational Licensing", University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 44 Issue 1, September of 1976.
“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. This is about judges who were sentencing kids to juvenile detention for kickbacks.
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