At some point, our elected officials — local, state and federal — are going to need to take a remedial course in the basics of the U.S. Constitution.
This time, it’s the Fourth Amendment. You know, the one the Left wants extended to foreign jihadists but is silent when TSA gropes and sexually assaults the elderly and strip-searches children.
And this. Something called “no refusal” checkpoints.
Florida is among several states now holding what are called “no refusal” checkpoints.
It means if you refuse a breath test during a traffic stop, a judge is on site, and issues a warrant that allows police to perform a mandatory blood test.
It’s like all of the other checkpoints. Every vehicle driving through the checkpoint must be checked out. That means every driver must submit to a voluntary breathalyzer or have blood drawn by police under a judge’s warrant.
Say you are driving down a highway that has a checkpoint. You’ve been nowhere near any alcohol let along consumed any. Too bad, so sad. You must get out of your car and submit to a breathalyzer and no doubt other field sobriety tests, even though you have done nothing wrong.
Naturally, the Nazi Nannies at MADD are OK with this blatant violation of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
“I think it’s a great deterrent for people,” said Linda Unfried, from Mother’s Against Drunk Driving in Hillsborough County.
It’s already being done in several counties, and now Unfried is working to bring it to the Tampa Bay area.
“I think you’ll see the difference because people will not drink and drive. I truly believe that,” she said.
I’ve never had much use for MADD and other alleged anti-drunk driving agit-prop groups. Why? Because they don’t tackle the real issues involved. Namely drivers with multiple arrests for DUI and blowing two, three or more times over the legal limit. Or worse, criminal illegal alien drunk drivers.
They are deafeningly silent on those issues.
Instead, the MADD nannies work to lower legal limits, which do little if anything to reduce drunk driving. This allows them and various politicians to pat themselves on the back and pose foe holy pictures thinking they’ve done something. It makes them feel good.
And after all, isn’t that all that matters?
I’ve never been a fan of highway checkpoints because they are a flat-out violation of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights. You know, the amendment that reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Yet here we have Americans presumed to be guilty being forced out of their vehicles to prove their innocence. That goes for checkpoints for anything. It has a martial law feeling to it.
But then maybe that’s what they are feeling us out — to see what we will tolerate. Same with the airport gropings and full nude body scans.
This may be coming to the rest of American soon. Why? Because Transportation Secretary Ray The Hood approves of it:
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has recently said he wants to see more states hold similar programs.
Say “Sieg Heil” to the nice people.
From the comments section:
There is no reason to refuse unless you have been drinking and as far as I am concerned you have no rights if you drink and drive.
Where is all the concern over civil liberties? Where are Those Lost Without ACLUe? Oh yeah, that’s right. There aren’t foreign jihadists involved. Their panties were in a wad when the Bush administration was listening into phone calls of foreign jihadists coming into the U.S. originating in foreign countries.
There is every reason to refuse. The logic of the commenter shows how much of a sheeple we’ve become. If you’ve done nothing wrong, you won’t mind if The Gestapo has a look, right?
“No Refusal” Programs Bother Me…
I despise drunk drivers. I think we need to harshly penalize drunk drivers. Indeed, I think we need to up the current penalties for drunk drivers. But I find efforts to catch drunk drivers like these to be troubling. They are doing it in Florida. Flori…
If you drink and drive your an idiot…I am used to the checkpoints..”hence the word used too” But this is a total violation of of constitutional rights as citizens. I mean really, they are going to strap you down and draw your blood if you refuse. I see all kinds of law suits stemming from this. I cannot believe that we as Americans are not more upset over this..THIS IS WHAT THEY DO IN GERMANY!!!!
You make a number of good points here. I’m not sure why a drunk illegal alien is worse that a drunk US citizen, but whatever.
I think there is a tendency to want to make enforcement brain dead simple. Anyone who has been pulled over before knows that it is not really all that hard for the officer to make a rough determination of possible DUI and move on to the next checks if need be. Nor is there really any need for this onsite blowing, blood drawing.
So, yes, you have a “progressive” who largely agrees with you. But, like most conservatives, I also need to pick my battles, and getting into a fight with MADD just isn’t worth it. I would rather spend my time battling those who would vote “corporations are people.” Much bigger fish to fry.
I am more afraid of government and public employee unions who have seduced some of the corporations to support statism.
Dear Cindy, I doubt they do this in Germany. I doubt they ever did anything like this in Germany until the Nazis started racial cleansing programs. Even then, they largely just killed you if they didn’t like your race, or imprisoned you and turned you into a slave laborer.
Don’t make this to be more than it is. If you, then you lose site of the problem and the solution.
The key here is “no-refusal”. So, you still have to be asked to blow, and to do that, they need a reason, true? So, don’t you need to appear to be drunk, or smell of alcohol or exhibit other signs? I have never been asked to blow unless I admitted to drinking. In that one case, I was quite certain I was well under the limit, I didn’t feel like lying, and it was the fastest way out of the whole stop. For the record, it was .03.
Think it through a bit.
For the record, I have always opposed these type of checkpoints because it makes the innocent submit to procedures in order to prove their innocence. In other words, every driver is presumed to have been drinking. The cornerstone of the American judicial system is innocent until proven guilty.
The police are not administering a breath test to every driver. They’re randomly stopping vehicles at some checkpoints, every car at others. If, during the brief time it takes to examine a license, an officer detects potential driver impairment(slurred speech, smell of alcohol), he may ask the driver to submit to a breath test and/or a field sobriety test. If the driver refuses the breath test and flunks the field sobriety test, the officer already has enough to haul you to jail for DUI. DNA/Blood can be legally acquired incident to arrest. This new wrinkly simply expedites the process. If you’re sober and are asked to breath into a tube, then there’s no worry. Under the 4th Amendment, a person does not have the same expectations of privacy while driving a vehicle that he or she has in a home. So, if you don’t drink and drive, you’ve nothing to fear.