Does the Tenth Amendment Trump the Third Amendment?

“A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.” — Thomas Jefferson

In April I wrote an essay about the Bill of Rights. In the essay I wrote:

“The Third Amendment: Quartering Troops:

“No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

This is no doubt the least talked about or challenged amendment forbidding Congress to station soldiers in private houses without the householders’ permission in time of peace, or without proper authorization in time of war. The amendment was bound up with memories of British soldiers who were quartered in American houses during the War of Independence. It is an indication of a desire, in 1789, to protect civilians from military bullying. This is the least-invoked provision of the Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court has never had occasion to interpret or apply it.”

Well it looks like I was wrong. I should have added the caveat “not yet.”

It’s been called the “forgotten amendment,” “an insignificant legal fossil,” and an “oft-forgotten relic” of the American Revolution.

But the Third Amendment made a rare appearance in federal court, figuring in a lawsuit filed this month by a Nevada man against the city of Henderson and its police chief.

The Third Amendment reads, in full:

“No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

How rare are Third Amendment cases? It’s been 30 years since a federal court handed down a significant Third Amendment decision.

Henderson resident Anthony Mitchell claims that Henderson police officers violated his Third Amendment rights when they “conspired among themselves to force him out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use.”

Responding to a domestic violence call at a neighbor’s residence in July 2011, officers told Mr. Mitchell that they needed to come into his home to gain a “tactical advantage,” according to the suit, which the Volokh Conspiracy wrote about here.

When Mr. Mitchell refused, police officers came to his home, banged on his door, and then smashed it open with a metal ram, he alleges.

He claims they then aimed their weapons, commanding him to lie down on the floor and crawl toward them. When he didn’t move, they allegedly fired pepper-spray balls at him, striking him three times at close range and causing him to “experience uncontrollable coughing and difficulty breathing,” the suit says.

Police then arrested Mr. Mitchell for “obstructing a police officer” before “swarming” into his home. He also claims they fired pepper-balls at his cowering dog named Sam.

The city attorney of Henderson wasn’t immediately available for comment. A spokesman for the Henderson Police Department declined comment.

It’s been a long time since a federal court has interpreted the meaning of the Third Amendment. In 1983, the Second Circuit ruled that the State of New York violated the Third Amendment rights of striking correction officers who were booted from staff housing by National Guard troops.

More recently, in 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit considered whether the military could fly planes above a private property without the owner’s permission. “Judicial interpretation of the Third Amendment is nearly nonexistent,” the court conceded, but ultimately sided with the government:

“We simply do not believe the Framers intended the Third Amendment to be used to prevent the military from regulated, lawful use of airspace above private property without the property owners’ consent.”

Scholars, though, have tried to make the case for the amendment’s relevance. For example, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, who teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University Law Center, thinks the Third Amendment is the “Rosetta Stone” of the Bill of Rights, offering insights into how the Framers designed the Constitution to constrain governmental power.

“The Third Amendment can reveal the structure of the Bill of Rights, and its objects,” the professor wrote.

It’s been 226 years since the Third Amendment was written to keep the federal government from quartering troops in American homes without consent and compensation, but a lawsuit just filed in Nevada suggests it’s as relevant as ever.

The framers of the Constitution ratified the Third Amendment to ensure citizens would never again have to accommodate soldiers, but a few centuries later it’s become more-or-less an antiquated law that’s rarely referenced in federal court. That changed recently when a family from Henderson, Nevada accused the local police department of constitutional violations after officers of the law allegedly took residence in two neighborhood homes.

According to a legal filing first obtained by Courthouse News Service, a handful of Henderson Police Department officers and the city itself are being sued for an array of charges — including Third Amendment and Fourth Amendment violations — over an incident that mirrors the making of the American Revolution.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs say police officers demanded they be allowed to occupy two homes owned by their clients on the city’s Eveningside Avenue in 2011 in order to conduct an investigation involving a neighbor’s residence. When the owners refused to comply with the request, they were reportedly arrested for obstruction and brought to jail.

As mentioned above police were investigating an incident at 363 Eveningside Avenue that July when Officer Christopher Worley called up the occupant of a neighboring property, Anthony Mitchell, and said he’d need to use his house in order to gain a 'tactical advantage' over the neighbor’s residence. Mitchell reportedly made it clear that he did not want to get involved in the probe and told Worley he would not be able to offer assistance. According to the lawsuit, Officer David Cawthorn, Sgt. Michael Waller and Worley all then "conspired among themselves to force Anthony Mitchell out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use."

“It was determined to move to 367 Eveningside and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested,” the report determined.

Moments later, the officers "arrayed themselves in front of plaintiff Anthony Mitchell's house and prepared to execute their plan," after which they “loudly commanded” they be let inside. Seconds later, Mitchell’s door was knocked down with a metal battering ram and the police entered his home.

"As plaintiff Anthony Mitchell stood in shock, the officers aimed their weapons at Anthony Mitchell and shouted obscenities at him and ordered him to lie down on the floor,” the suit alleges.

As the police moved into the home, Mitchell was reportedly called an “asshole” by the cops, ordered to crawl on the floor and then shot several times with non-lethal ‘pepper ball rounds’ from close range. He was then arrested for obstructing an officer while the cops combed through his house without permission, but not before they also opened fire at the plaintiff’s dog, prompting it to howl “in fear and pain.”

At the same time, officers approached Anthony’s parents down the block at 362 Eveningside and asked father Michael Mitchell if he’d accompany them back to a local ‘command center’ to assist with negotiating the surrender of the neighbor suspected of domestic violence. When he got there, though, he became concerned that the cops had tricked him into leaving so they could try to gain access to yet another home. Michael Mitchell then tried to head back home, but when he left the command center he was arrested, handcuffed and placed in the back of a cop car.

Attorney for the family say there was no reasonable grounds to detain Michael Mitchell, nor probable cause to suspect him of committing any crime. That didn’t keep officers from holding both him and his son Anthony for nine hours, however, before they were ultimately released after posting bond.

All criminal counts against the Mitchells were later dismissed with prejudiced, but the family has now lobbed charges of their own. Their attorney is asking for a trial by jury to hear the case and ideally award his clients punitive damages for violations of the Third, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, assault and battery, conspiracy, defamation, abuse of process, malicious prosecution, negligence and emotional distress. [Read more here]

Now we have the conundrum of which Amendment applies here. Discounting the violation of the Fourth Amendment violation we have to ask two questions. Firstly; do police officers fall under the definition of “soldiers? Secondly; does the State of Nevada have the right to occupy a house without the consent of the homeowner?

The case raises a number of fascinating issues that will likely stir the passion of liberty lovers, particularly the question of whether police officers count as “soldiers.” One can certainly make that case in this day and age of military style SWAT teams.

Reading accounts of events that day, it seems pretty clear the Henderson police violated Mitchell’s rights. Police officers should not have the power to commandeer private property whenever it suits them, and they certainly shouldn’t have the authority to terrorize a man at gunpoint in his own home because he doesn’t want to get involved in their police actions. These goons should face punishment. So, many will track the case with anticipation, holding their breaths while federal employees debate the definition of their rights.

Most won’t even realize the risk they place themselves in.

This case represents yet another attempt to “incorporate” a provision of the Bill of Rights and enforce it on the states. The law blog Volokh Conspiracy makes this very point:

“A second possible impediment to winning a Third Amendment claim in this case is that the Amendment is one of the few parts of the Bill of Rights that the Supreme Court still has not against state governments. For incorporation purposes, claims against local governments (like this one) are treated the same way as claims against states. On the other hand, the Supreme Court has never ruled that the Third Amendment does not apply to the states. If, as the Court has previously decided, virtually all the rest of the Bill of Rights applies to state governments, there is no good reason to exclude the Third Amendment. If the Third Amendment part of the case is not dismissed on other grounds, the federal district court may have to address the issue of incorporation.”

Conservatives and liberals alike love turning the federal courts into a liberty enforcement squad because it allows one stop shopping as they jockey to define our rights for us. Incorporation is a very bad and very dangerous idea. Much mischief has been carried out under this doctrine.

By turning to federal courts, they ultimately empower five federal employees to define their rights. And when the federal courts ultimately decide the issue, that decision doesn’t just bind one county or state, it extends to all 330 million-plus Americans.

If the judges happen to issue the “right” opinion, things move along nicely. But how often do federal judges actually rule in a way that preserves individual liberty? Almost never!

Consider this case. If the federal courts ultimately hold that police officers do qualify as soldiers and the officers’ actions fit the definition of “quartering,” we have a “win” for liberty (in the short run). But if they don’t, the issue will be considered final. Not just for Mitchell. Not just for citizens of Nevada. But for all 330 million-plus Americans!

This issue should certainly have its day in court, but in the Nevada state court system not the Ninth Circuit Court, where no doubt it will eventually land. You see, the Nevada Constitution features a very similar provision in its Declaration of Rights.

“Sec: 12. Quartering soldier in private house. No soldier shall, in time of Peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of War, except in the manner to be prescribed by law.”

Since local and state police fall under the authority of the state. The state constitution governs their actions. It delegates authority to the state government and its agents, and its Declaration of Rights restricts their actions to protect the rights of the people of the state. The U.S. Constitution delegates authority to the federal government. The Bill of Rights was only intended to operate on the government created by the Constitution — not the state government, as the Preamble makes clear.

“THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.”

Of course, Mitchell could easily lose his case in state court. But at least the ruling would only bind people in Nevada, leaving the door open for other states to make their own determinations. A loss in federal court means a narrowing of liberty for all Americans. True, civil libertarians won’t get the sweeping nation-wide win they might like with a victory in state court, but it would set a precedent and make the battle easier as it moves to other states.

Incorporation shreds the fabric of the American system. It is a double edged sword. It distorts the proper delegation of powers, and it places the federal government in a position of supremacy never intended by the founders. They feared centralized systems and monopolized decision making. They would shudder at the notion of five federal judges defining the rights and liberties of every man, woman and child in America with absolute and final authority.

Those who fight for liberty risk losing the war as they clamor for a chance to win the occasional battle. We have to resist the temptation to run and grovel at the feet of federal employees in Washington D.C. every time some state or local functionary tramples our rights.

Sure, we might win some protection for gun rights at the federal level. We might win some restrictions on police powers. We might win some privacy rights. But more often than not, we walk out from between those grand marble pillars at the Supreme Court building with diminished rights “incorporated” across the Fruited Plain. And in the process, we’ve further centralized power in one place.

Power monopolies never work out well for the people.

The only hope for liberty lies in decentralizing our system. That will never happen as long as we insist on making the feds our liberty enforcement squad. We merely empower them, to our detriment.

As I stated above this case will be a battle between the Third, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Over the years the Fourteenth Amendment has won out in many cases. It is the “Due Process and Equal Protection Clause that has created all of the mischief:

“SECTION 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

On the other hand “The Privileges and Immunities Clause” of Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution states that "the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." This clause protects fundamental rights of individual citizens and restrains state efforts to discriminate against out-of-state citizens. However, the Privileges and Immunities Clause extends not to all commercial activity, but only to fundamental rights. I don't believe his would apply in this case. It is the Fourteenth that has and is presenting the problem with the Tenth.

So, do we simply sit back and allow state governments to trample our right to keep and bear arms? Of course not. We wield the Second Amendment to keep the federal government at bay, and we work through our state Constitutions to protect our rights within the borders of our state. Every state Constitution in the U.S. has some provision protecting the right to bear arms — except New Jersey. (You folks in the Garden State should get busy remedying that.) Many utilize the exact same language as the Second Amendment. Other feature restrictive stipulations delegating some regulatory power to the state legislature. But that simply means the people of the states must work diligently to ensure their representatives respect and protect their rights, and abide by their state constitutions.

Ultimately, we should not leave the protection of our rights to any judge or government, particularly some large, centralized power structure. We shoulder the responsibility for protecting our rights. We simply cannot depend on a judge’s ruling — especially when that ruling bastardizes the entire system. We must focus our effort through the proper authority based on the constitutional delegation of power. A pragmatic appeal to centralized authority to “protect us” might yield a victory. But remember, Japan won Pearl Harbor, but it lost the war.

As Thomas Jefferson stated:

“Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government.”

Bad Behavior Begets More Bad Behavior

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Several years while on a cruise I had a conversation with couple from Great Britain. They were decrying he violence and hooliganism prevalent at European soccer games and how it was impossible to take a family, especially with young children, to one of these games. They said the combination of “low class” fans, alcohol, and lack of proper security made the games off limits for the average family. They also said that this combination along with the out of control passion displayed by supporters of one team over the other was the cause of onging verbal assaults leading to fights.

The went on to say that they had watch games of American football on television and though he game was much more exciting and the fans seemed more friendly and well behaved.

When the NFL had their minor league teams in Europe according to an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the leading papers in Germany, comparing the crowds attending the NFL style football as opposed to soccer games the writer claimed the crowds were more “upscale” and well behaved. Even the Frankfurt chief of police said he needed about half the security at he NFL games than the soccer games.

That was several years ago, but things have taken a turn for the worse in the United States. Football and baseball games are becoming unfriendly events for families. The crowds are becoming more hostile and he fans more aggressive to fans of the opposing teams. The language you will hear spouted around you as you sit in you $75 or $100 dollar seat will make sailor blush and there is a constant display of bad behavior and fights in the stands. In fact these fights draw more attention than the plays on the field.

Over the weekend there were fights and shootings at Candlestick Park, in San Francisco during a game between the San Francisco 49ers and their arch rivals the Oakland Raiders. While the Oakland Raiders have always had a reputation of bad unruly fan behavior it reached a new height on Saturday night when two fans were gunned down in the parking lot for wearing the jersey of the wrong team. ESPN reported:

“A man wearing a shirt slamming the San Francisco 49ers was seriously wounded as gunfire erupted in the parking lot after the team's NFL preseason game, while another man sustained lesser injuries in an earlier shooting, police said.

The violence occurred after the 49ers' 17-3 victory Saturday night over the Oakland Raiders at Candlestick Park, police Sgt. Michael Andraychak said.

A 24-year-old man was treated at San Francisco General Hospital for life-threatening injuries, and a 20-year-old man was hospitalized with less serious wounds, Andraychack told The Associated Press.:

Their names were not released.

The violence comes months after a San Francisco Giants fan was severely beaten by two men in Los Angeles Dodgers gear outside Dodger Stadium after the teams' season opener March 31. Two suspects have been charged in the case.

Police Sgt. Frank Harrell said that in Saturday's attack the 24-year-old man, who was wearing a T-shirt referring to the 49ers with an obscenity, was shot two to four times in the stomach, according to reports in the Oakland Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. He drove his truck to a gate and stumbled to security, Harrell said.

The other man was shot before that in the parking lot and had superficial face injuries, Harrell said.

"We are treating it as separate shootings, but we believe they are related," Harrell told reporters outside the stadium.

Harrell said police took a man in a Raiders jersey off a party bus before it left the stadium and were calling him a suspect.

The suspect and the two victims had all attended the game, Harrell told the newspapers.

The 49ers issued a statement acknowledging the shootings and the investigation, but offering no further details.

In violence during the game, the Oakland Tribune reported that a 26-year-old San Rafael man was assaulted and knocked unconscious in a men's restroom. Police said he was hospitalized and a suspect was arrested. There was no immediate indication that it was connected to the postgame shootings.”

In another report on Fox News this morning a horrific brawl broke out in the stands at the same game. Click here to watch the video, it will tell you much more than I can. There were other numerous fights throughout the stadium.

What is amazing, when watching the video, is to see the fans urging the brawlers on and other fans taking video so they can post it to YouTube. The looks on the faces of the fans urging the fighters on is downright scary and the security guard seemed totally overpowered by the brawlers.

Consider if you had taken your wife and child to the game and laid out from $100 to $250 dollars for the three tickets and then had to have your well being threatened by being exposed to this behavior.

I recall when I could afford to go to the games and had games I could go to (I lost my team to St. Louis years ago) it was fun. You booed the opposing team amd the officials when they made a call you did not agree with. You even booed your own team when you thought they were playing badly. People would talk with each other and critique he play on the field. Now you have to watch who you root on for fear getting punched in the face by some irate fan.

What drives this bad behavior? In my view it’s an extension of the overall bad behavior in our general society. We have flash mobs running through the streets breaking windows and beating on people. We have riots after a team wins a championship game, riots that end in looting and vandalism that is more like the invading Huns than a civilized society.

We also have bad behavior by mobs protesting political events like the recent bad behavior by the union mobs in Wisconsin protesting Governor Scott Walker’s legislation to curtail collective bargaining and pension contributions by union thugs, college students and teachers. The recent strike by unionized Verizon working on the east coast also showed union thugs exhibiting the same bad behavior. It seems that this bad behavior always come from the left.

You can see example after example in the left-wing blogs and publications like the Daily Kos where invectives like “racist”, “moron”, and “fascists” are thrown around like so many snowballs in a snowball fight. It is not only the invectives but the foul and obscene language they use in the comment sections. They seem incapable of expressing themselves in a cogent manner without using ad hominines and four letter words that sailors would not use in mixed company, yet they feel totally at ease with. Just look at his latest example in the Daily Kos’ week in review: Obama vs. Moronic, Racist, Violent Anita Bryant Fans as reported by News Busters:

“Even Kossacks who've been hugely disappointed in President Obama are starting to realize that for them, he's clearly preferable to anyone the Republicans might nominate. For that reason, they've dialed back their criticism of Obama for falling short of the progressive ideal on issues from health care to the deficit in favor of blasts at their enemies on the right.

As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.”

Is it any wonder people feel empowered to behave badly when they cannot type a simple sentence to deliver their opinion without resorting to bad language and insults. This is what the left has learned over the years. Facts don’t matter, screaming and invectives will do.

They are so blinded by hatred for everyone who disagrees with them, so cocksure of their moral superiority and their towering intelligence that they can only attack with unhinged verbal vengeance like those fans at the football game. If they weren't somewhat frightening, they'd almost be funny.

Look at what happened in the United Kingdom last week. Crowds ran rampage through the streets of London, Birmingham, and Manchester looting, burning and smashing everything in sight.

We accept this behavior today and give it excuses like, they are poor, they are underprivileged, and they are just expressing their frustrations with society. When the ones doing the rioting and looting are arrested, which is all to rare, they go to court all decked out in suits and ties and their attorneys play on the sympathies of the judges and juries begging them not to ruin this young person’s or family man’s life by convicting him of a felony and sentencing him to jail. Most of these offenders get off with a slap on the wrist suffering much less consequences than their victims.

It’s time for society and our judicial system to begin cracking down on these hooligans and their anti-social behavior. No excuses, no exceptions.

Bush Gone, Blame It On Palin

“It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decent, to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness.” — James Wilson

As it turns out, what Billy Sunday failed to accomplish, some unruly teenagers — with some assistance from the Democratic Party — are close to finishing. That toddlin’ town, Chicago — the home of deep-dish pizza, Al Capone and a sizable number of adolescents in dire need of an extended stay at a juvenile detention center — is facing a new crime wave.

The reports have come fast and furious. Mobs of teenagers have knocked over drug stores. Mobs of teenagers have assaulted passersby. Mobs of teenagers have pillaged retail establishments and plundered the Magnificent Mile as if they were Alaric and his horde of Visigoths and the Windy City was Rome. All this adolescent rage makes me wonder about the efficacy of Bill Clinton’s “midnight basketball.”

According to the Chicago Sun-Times Rahm Emanuel’s Windy City is in the midst of a crime wave. Here are a few examples:

Man wounded while sitting in car in Austin neighborhood; A man was wounded late Monday while sitting in a car in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side. At 9:31 p.m., a 22-year-old man was sitting in a car in the 200 block of North Lockwood Avenue when a person approached on foot and…

Man, 19, fatally shot in Roseland; A man fatally shot early Tuesday in the Far South Side Roseland neighborhood, police said. The man, 19, was shot about 2:40 a.m. while standing with another male on the sidewalk near 107th Street and Michigan Avenue, police News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro said. He …

Englewood man killed, over 20 people hurt in weekend shootings; A 55-year-old Englewood man was killed and more than 20 people were injured in shootings throughout the city late Friday into Sunday. Kent Richardson died after being shot in the face and under the arm in the 6200 block of South Laflin around 10:40 p.m. …

5 police injured, 13 in custody after Little Village alley fight; Five Chicago Police officers were injured early Sunday during a brawl while responding to a complaint of loud music on the Southwest Side, police said. Thirteen people, including two women, were taken into custody after the fight in the 2800 block of West 25th, police …

1 dead, 14 wounded in shootings overnight; A 55-year-old man was killed and at least 14 others were wounded in shootings throughout the city between late Saturday and Sunday morning, including five men wounded in separate shootings during a violent 20-minute period on the South Side. The shooting started at 10:30 p.m. …

7-year-old girl shot in leg, man wounded on South Side; A 7-year-old girl was shot in the leg when gunshots rang out Saturday following an argument in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. Police are questioning a “person of interest” in the shooting, which took place in the 5700 block of South Hoyne Avenue and …

9 hurt, 1 critically, in overnight shootings; At least nine people were injured, one critically, in various shootings across the city late Friday and early Saturday. No one is in custody for any of the shootings. A 21-year-old man is in critical condition after being shot in the stomach just after midnight …

I could go on and on, but by now you no doubt have a picture of what is happening in the town Obama and Oprah think is so great. No wonder the International Olympic Committee ignored their pleas for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Fret not, Chicago-land citizens. Your top cop, Police Supervisor Garry McCarthy, is on the case. McCarthy, who previously served as Police Chief in that Paris-on-the-Passaic, Newark, N.J., has identified the criminal mastermind behind the growing crime wave enveloping Chicago: Governor Sarah Palin.

Actually, according to McCarthy, Palin is the commander of a conspiracy comprised of:

• Palin: “(Palin) was caribou-hunting and talking about the right to bear arms. Why wasn’t she at the crime scene with me?”
• Firearm makers: “Who’s paying the price for gun manufacturers being rich and living in gated communities?”
• And government-sponsored racism: “— the flow of illegal firearms into our urban centers — that are killing black and brown children.” (Hey, I thought ATF was behind that one)

Among those who didn’t make McCarthy’s list of suspects would be the actual perpetrators. Granted, in the legendary, Democratic machine-controlled political sewer that is Chicago, blaming crime on criminals is about as functional as blaming the Cubs’ World Series drought on the lights at Wrigley Field. McCarthy could blame the parents; but parents who unleash little monsters like those tearing through Chicago are as likely to accept responsibility for their progenies’ misbehavior as they are to vote for a conservative (who would likely remind them of their dereliction of parental duty). And it is possible that their good-for-nothing 15-year-old brats really did find new watches and Air Jordans™ on the side of the road. “Honest, Mom!”

According to Investor’s Business Daily in its editorial; Top Chicago Cop Targets Palin:

“Chicago's new police superintendent blames Alaska's ex-governor for inner-city gun violence and crime, and says gun-rights advocates are racist. Disarming victims doesn't prevent crime, sir.

Speaking to the choir, literally, about gun control, Garry McCarthy, former police chief of Newark, N.J., told an audience at St. Sabina Church in the Windy City about leaving a homicide scene in Newark, returning home and flipping on the TV to find an episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska."

"She was caribou hunting and talking about the right to bear arms," McCarthy said. "Why wasn't she at the crime scene with me?"

We know. We don't see the connection between hunting and gang violence either, but gun-control advocates do.

Sarah Palin was not at that crime scene because she had nothing to do with the crime. As a defender of the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, she is like the vast majority of law-abiding gun-owning Americans who never fire or even point their gun in anger, unless someone's trying to break into their house.

McCarthy rambled on. He equated private gun ownership with what he called "government-sponsored racism" and the right to bear arms with slavery, segregation and Jim Crow laws. "Federal laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms into our urban centers across the country, that are killing our black and brown children," he said.”

I call this sort of Keystone Kops method of avoiding the real culprits in urban societal breakdown “the politics of ease.” It’s easier for a liberal like McCarthy to blame a crime wave on the former Governor of Alaska than it is to force criminals, their accomplices and their enablers to look in the mirror. More important to liberals like McCarthy, it’s easier for the Democrats to gain votes by offering the chance to blame Palin, gun manufacturers and mythological institutional racism than to suddenly develop the introspection which is as common in a place like Chicago (or Newark) as honest politicians and well-behaved teenagers.

Fortunately for the liberal establishment, decades of near-total Democratic domination of Windy City politics has — much like Newark — left Chicagoans either unwilling or unable to discern the true nature of their city’s burdens. However, unlike cesspools like Newark, Chicago boasts some significantly redeeming characteristics, not least of which is the presence of living proof that McCarthy’s charge of racism is void on its face. Surely, McCarthy and his liberal allies don’t expect us to believe that Sarah Palin, firearms manufacturers and fictional bigotry can create chaos-from-afar in the same place that boasts the residency of the most powerful individual in the free world. I find it highly unlikely that Oprah Winfrey would allow it.

Barring intervention from Oprah or some other powerful product of Illinois who may choose to assist Chicago in escaping the grip of increasingly violent crime, the Windy City faces a grim future. If the liberal who has been ill-advisedly placed in charge of local law enforcement is more interested in explaining away antisocial behavior with anti-bill of rights demagoguery, tangential blame-shifting and pointing fingers at a woman who lives more than 3,000 miles away, then Chicago is headed down the highway to either hell or Newark.

McCarthy is a student of neither history nor facts. It was laws that banned gun ownership in major urban centers such as Chicago and the District of Columbia that placed black, brown and, for that matter, white children in danger by forcibly disarming them in the face of an onslaught by thugs. That is, until Supreme Court decisions in Heller v. District of Columbia and McDonald v. City of Chicago.

Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old African-American Army veteran who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thought the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution he fought to protect gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he once protected his country. It is obvious Superintendent McCarthy won’t do the job. But then, of course, he always has Sarah Palin to blame.

Seventy-One Shots: The Death of Jose Guereña

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it. — Mark Twain

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik infamously railed in January of this year that Arizona is a “Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

One must wonder if the “prejudice and bigotry” he considers endemic to Arizona is to blame for the death of U.S. Marine veteran Jose Guereña, killed when Dupnik deputies gunned him down in his home. They fired 71 shots. They hit him 60 times. And then, as if this wasn’t enough, Dupnik’s deputies blocked paramedics for an hour and 14 minutes from approaching the scene, denying Guereña treatment until he was assuredly dead.

Dupnik’s SWAT team initially claimed that Guereña fired at them while they were serving a warrant — as he slept. They claimed that his bullets hit the bulletproof shield that the entry team hid behind, and that the barrage of bullets they fired back was in self-defense.

Only, Guereña never fired his weapon. Awoken by his wife with screams that men with guns were invading his home and threatening his family, Jose Guereña armed himself with a AR-15 rifle and crouched in the hallway. The SWAT team unloaded upon Guereña on sight. He apparently recognized the home invaders as police. He took 60 rounds, but never — as the Pima County Sheriff’s Department was forced to admit — took off his weapon’s safety as he was being killed.

The Arizona Daily Star reports:

“The wife of a Tucson man killed in a Pima County SWAT raid May 5 pleaded for five minutes with 911 dispatchers to send an ambulance for her mortally wounded husband, audio records show.

Often through tears and sometimes in broken English, Vanessa Guereña, tells 911 operators that her husband had been shot by a "bunch of people" who opened the door of their southwest-side home and "just shoot him." Meanwhile, dispatchers worked to determine if she was calling from a house where the SWAT team was serving a search warrant, audio released Friday by Drexel Heights Fire Department reveals. It takes about an hour for waiting medics to know what happened, and the man is dead before fire crews are allowed into the home.

Jose Guereña, 26, a former Marine, was sleeping after the graveyard shift at Asarco Mission mine about 9:30 a.m. when his wife woke him saying she heard noises outside and a man was at their window. Guereña told his wife to hide in a closet with their 4-year-old son, his wife has said. He grabbed an AR-15 rifle and moments later was slumped in the kitchen, mortally wounded from a hail of gunfire.

For about five minutes after Guereña was shot, his wife stays on the phone trying to explain what happened and asking for an ambulance.

More than a week later, few details about the investigation that brought the SWAT team to the home Guereña shared with his wife and their two young sons are known. Details of the search warrant have not been made public and deputies would not comment on what was seized from the home.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department has provided no details about the investigation that prompted the raid and little information about the moments leading up to 71 gunshots being fired at Guereña, whose gun had the safety on. He was shot 60 times, doctors told the family. Initially the Sheriff's Department said Guereña fired at officers, but they retracted that this week. Drexel Heights provided audio of the 911 calls after the Star filed a public records request.

Vanessa Guereña, 27, continuously asks the operator to "please, please" send somebody to help her husband in a call in which she seems desperate, frustrated and panicked and says she could hear people talking outside.

About a minute into the 911 call a dispatcher who says she is with the Sheriff's Department comes on and asks if the SWAT team was at her house. Guereña sounds confused, and says her husband isn't talking to her anymore. She then talks over two operators who are trying to figure out if the house in the 7100 block of South Redwater Drive is among those targeted to be searched that morning as part of an investigation.

The operator asks again if there were law enforcement officers at her house and Guereña says yes, that they're outside. She then adds that they had come inside earlier, shot her husband and pointed a "big ol' gun" at her. She grabbed her son and worried she would be shot.”

It was, you’ll recall, a claim Dupnik made in the wake of Jared Loughner’s bloody rampage at a “Congress in your Corner” event at a Safeway supermarket in Tucson, where six were killed and 14 others were injured — including, gravely, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Dupnik was attempting to blame the conservative Tea Party movement for the shooting when he made the comment. And even after it was revealed that Loughner’s few known political views had been described as “quite liberal,” and were in fact muddled at best, he refused to retract his slur.

So when Dupnik’s teams attempted a complicated four-house raid of minority families looking for drugs, perhaps bigotry and prejudice really was in play.

Perhaps Dupnik’s officers assumed every Hispanic accused of being a drug dealer really was one, and perhaps they assumed that the tenant of a home protecting his loved ones must be a bloodthirsty cartel member waiting in ambush. Is that why they gunned down a tired, hard-working father sleeping off a night shift at the local copper mine? A Marine veteran of Iraq that had the discipline not to fire — a discipline that a trigger-happy SWAT team which has now killed three men in less than a year cannot itself exercise?

Not only has the Pima Sheriff’s Department tried to justify firing 71 shots at one man in a small hallway, hitting him (thankfully, just him) 60 times in a home where his wife and child were present. They’ve attempted to justify their refusal to let a team of paramedics treat Guereña, who was still miraculously alive after being sprayed mercilessly with bullets. It takes a competent SWAT team just a handful of minutes to “clear” a residential home during a raid. Dupnik’s SWAT team refused to declare the scene “clear” for an agonizing one hour and 14 minutes, and not until Jose Guereña had already died.

A cynic might be tempted to suggest Dupnik’s SWAT team was waiting for the only witness to their assault to die. Considering how the Sheriff’s Department has acted since they stormed the home, a rational person might be tempted to agree.

Not content to blame the victim for his own death, they attempted to insinuate he was a drug dealer, even though they were forced to admit under direct questioning that no drugs were found in his home, and that a clumsy cop falling down may have triggered the bloodbath.

Vanessa Guereña claims that neither she nor her husband heard the officers announce themselves as police. As anyone who has ever seen an episode of any popular police reality show knows, no entry team waits 15 seconds after announcing themselves to batter down a door and rush the inhabitants — as Pima County Lt. Michael O’Connor claims his SWAT team did. Identical scenes of immediate entry upon announcement (or after breaching), without giving those inside a chance to react, is a standard tactic captured again and again.

Why Lt. Michael O’Connor decided to tell a mistruth about a well-known, heavily documented, and highly standardized technique isn’t immediately clear. Perhaps it is because of the inevitable wrongful death lawsuit to be filed against the Pima County Sheriff’s Department on behalf of Vanessa Guereña and her two children. Or perhaps it is because of the possible DOJ civil rights investigation. Perhaps Dupnik’s employees simply are unable to act any more professionally after a raid than they do during one.

No-knock warrants are typically used to surprise the target of raids and keep them from disposing of evidence, with possible violence from the offender cited as justification for the military-style use of heavy armor and machine guns.

Jose Guereña’s death was entirely preventable. Over-armed, over-amped law enforcement is causing far more harm to the public than other tactics and techniques possibly could.

The over-militarization of law enforcement agencies and over-use of SWAT teams is an idea that needs to be revisited in a sane society. Too many good people have been traumatized, and too many killed, under the flimsiest of circumstances.

Guereña was a Tucson native and Flowing Wells High School graduate. He joined the Marines in 2002. He served two tours in Iraq in 2003 and 2005 as part of the Yuma-based MWSS-173. After surviving two tours of duty in Iraq, only to lose his life in an encounter with Clarence Dupnik’s keystone cops, Jose Guereña was buried with full military honors.

The Guereña family has retained the services Christopher Scileppi to file a wrongful death suit against Pima County and Sheriff Dupnik. He has also requested the Justice Department to open an investigation into the shooting. Will Eric Holder do so or is only concerned about the Black Panthers? On the other hand where is NCIS when we need them.