The Securities and Exchange Commission

[DueDillinger]

Liberty's Last Legs?

Miss Beers, my sixth-grade teacher at Willard Elementary School, has finally been sanctified by none other than the US Supreme Court. Having been whacked on the back of her head by a wayward spitball, Miss Beers demanded the culprit fess up. When nobody breathed, she angrily decreed the bureaucrat's standard punishment: "Nobody gets recess!" Innocent and guilty alike. It was our introduction to the injustice of guilt by association.

Lost in the libertarian wrath and rancor of the Supreme Judicalcrats' anti First Amendment ruling that upheld most of the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Campaign Finance Scam was Miss Beers' No Recess validation. The Court's Guilt by Association ruling in December decreed that if cops discover a car occupied by multiple people plus contraband ('kän-tr&-"band, noun: any inanimate object declared illegal by a majority vote of Congresscrats) and nobody fesses up to owning it, everybody gets arrested. ("Nobody gets recess!") Innocent and guilty alike.

Prosecutors panting after the Governor's office will love this one. No more of that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt silliness. "He benched his butt in a Beemer near a baggie of blow. He's guilty and he goes to jail." Couple that with the "Should Have Known" indictment (i.e., The Boston Globe, November 18, 2003: "Meanwhile, federal authorities said Monday they would resume their efforts to try to seize the home of Wayne and Ruby Gibson, saying they knew or should have known that their son was using it as a base for his heroin dealing.") and you get: "He was sitting near somebody else's drugs and he should have known it, so he goes to jail and we get his Beemer to boot!"

In the campaign finance case, the Supremes ruled in favor of the politicians. In the guilt by association case, they ruled in favor of convenience for cops. They love to throw around phrases like "the government has a compelling interest" while seldom observing "citizens have a compelling interest." Since virtually nobody in any branch of government has our interests at heart, we're rapidly approaching the defense of last resort ? armed resistance.

(Note to federal cyberspys: I'm not advocating the violent overthrow of the US gov, so don't suck your Fruit of the Looms into your bureaucratic crotches. That's because there's still a peaceful trump card or two left to play, like jury nullification and libertarian litigation.)

The principal of jury nullification, of course, says that juries have the right and responsibility not only of deciding whether Andre the Accused is breaking the law but also whether the law is breaking Andre.

The best example of jury nullification occurred prior to the first ever Blue-Gray game, the one contested with bullets and bayonets. The Court of the Supremes, mindful even then of defending the status quo rather than extending freedom, ruled that slaves decamping into northern climes must be nabbed and "repatriated" downstream. Many citizens, mindful then as few are today that the Supreme Court is not (repeat, not) the ultimate arbiter of things Constitutional, cried foul. They established the Underground Railroad (which was not, as my sixth-grade teacher Miss Beers could have but failed to explain, an actual tunnel with train tracks extending from the Mason-Dixon Line to the Canadian border).

But we're beginning to see its reawakening, mostly in drug cases here and there. We need to see it in guilt by association cases and campaign contribution cases and tax cases and all other victimless crime cases. The prime mover behind the rebirth of jury nullification, as most libertarians know, is the Fully Informed Jury Association, aka www.fija.org. Jury nullification is the sleeping Andre the Giant of citizen activism, and we need to prod it back into vigorous life.

But that alone may not be enough to save Andre the Accused. Libertarians need to develop their own version of the ACLU, sort of an American Constitutional Libertarian Union, with copious coin and cahones (k&-'h?-n?z, noun: (1) chutzpah (2) objects found in some Fruit of the Looms). Someday, every Washingtoncrat who utters the oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution only to bail at the first sniff of pork will be charged with felonious dereliction of duty. We have the beginnings of this, too. They're called the Institute for Justice, doing business at www.IJ.org.

Politics? Think tanks? Public interest organizations? Single-issue groups? Why choose amongst them? Do them all!

If peacefully petitioning the proponents of power won't fetch our freedoms back, well, hold on to your Fruit of the Looms.

Published 01 January 2004 by Garry Reed

http://www.freecannon.com/LibertysLastLegs.htm