Kennedy, Breyer, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Souter Say Suicide is Painless

By SFBert

Horrors. Horrors. Horrors. That is what the Supreme Court of the United States has unleashed on the people of the country whose freedoms it is supposed to protect. Before the Constitution was written, a document called the “Declaration of Independence” existed which listed among other things, man’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is certainly no accident that those rights were listed in that order by those courageous enough to seek freedom from Great Britain.

Last week’s decision by the Supreme Court is now past mention by the media. It is now past mention by even the right-wing pundits on talk radio. It is now accepted. But it looms large to those of us who have been both in war and in law enforcement.

To my knowledge, none of the five who passed this decision down have ever been participants in a war as combatants and none have been on the streets as police officers. So my understanding of why they decided what they did was to gain more power for the judiciary at the exclusion of history, international law, and prior lawful actions by our government from the time of the Revolutionary War on.

Those of us who have been engaged in the enforcement of our laws as police officers have been called to testify against those we arrested. The defense always starts with an effort to create a doubt in the mind of the jury that the arrest was unlawful. So we go sit in stands most of the time many months after we have made the arrest and are asked to identify the person we arrested. We are asked in minute detail what we did immediately before, during, and after the arrest. When evidence is presented, there has to be documentation for the chain of custody for the evidence from the time it was taken in to the time it showed up in court.

During the time that it took for the defendant to come to trial, they fatten up in jail, or choose to go on diets to lose weight. They shave or grow facial hair. They change hair styles, cut all their hair off, or if bald, put on wigs or grow it back if they had shaved heads when arrested. They never are in the same clothes when arrested. Defense attorneys try to discredit us by asking us about what was the defendant wearing when arrested months ago. They ask us about why the descriptions we wrote in our reports do not match the defendants sitting in the dock. And in the case of evidence, we are quizzed in detail by Junior Perry Masons if we are “positive, positive, positive this is the same weapon you claimed to have taken off Mr. Defendant.”

We resort to little tricks of the trade such as taking the grips off a pistol and carving our initials inside them before we put them in the evidence locker. That way when it shows back up in court we can take the grips off and see whether they have our initials on them or not. Defense attorneys have presented Trojan Horses in court to see whether we could identify evidence we may have handled only for a total of ten minutes eighteen months ago.

But we accept this as police officers. These are the rules to protect American citizens. And in most cases we are dealing with only one individual and we can call in other officers to witness what is happening so we can get supplemental reports from them to protect the credibility of our arrest. And you thought cops gathered at a crime scene just because we’re a bunch on nosy busy-bodies. No – it serves a purpose in court. Again, to my knowledge no Supreme Court Justice has ever worked the streets nor testified in court as an arresting officer subject to the questioning from a defense attorney who has had months to prepare for the moment.

Now, let’s look at combat. Much has been written about it – from the stand point of psychological and physical effects; from the stand point of history; and, from the stand point of lessons to be learned for improving tactics. Men react to it differently. The reactions range from freezing up in disbelief that these events are happening all around oneself to the state of the Zen mind in highly trained warriors who see all but focus on no one thing. The one thing we all sort of agree on, is that it is confusing as hell.

Battle is an action to force choices on the other side. We try to impose choices on the enemy, they try to impose choices on us. It is the side that imposes the worst choices on the other, that wins. Stand, run, fiqht, hide, go right, go left, go forward, fall back – choices, choices, choices. And modern battle is no longer the battle of massed formations – no more Spartan phalanx, no Roman squares, no 19th century Waterloos. It is one man, and maybe a buddy or two, against another individual or two. Win and move to the next man, win and move to the next, and so on and so on and so on. So if you are lucky enough to take a prisoner, you pass him to the rear, and you keep moving on. That’s modern combat.

Months later, if your prisoner gets a hearing, are you going to remember him? Are you going to remember if he was carrying a weapon to make him a combatant? Chances are if you took him prisoner, he shed his weapon.” Well”, the defense attorneys will ask, what makes you so sure he was a combatant?” “Well,” they will ask, “Did you look up to make sure that this was the man shooting at you? If he was shooting at you ? What was he shooting at you with and where is it now? My client was just a poor herder caught in the middle of a fight between you and the enemy. Can you tell me what he was wearing when you captured him? Why was there no immediate written report that you had this man in custody? Did you speak his language so you could ask him? No, you just unlawfully pointed a gun in his face and sent him to the rear.”

And the truly pathetic truth of what I write is that there are legions of attorneys who for ideology, for hate of country, and for personal gain (the government pays attorneys well), will line up to get the Jihadists set free.

There have been sad days in our country’s history. The shame of this week’s event is that so few know its consequences and that so many on the left rejoice at the poison we just drank in the name of Constitutional rights. One day, I pray, this decision will be reversed and it passes into history along side of the Dred Scott decision as bad SCOTUS decisions. But until then, June 12, 2008 will pass into history as the day that the Supreme Court of the US did decide that the Constitution was a suicide pact after all.