Originally Posted by
COSPILOT
We are losing site that she was asked a simple question and she refused to answer. I don't see how responding is a violation of privacy or civil rights. Are you a United States Citizen? Yes or no.
I see a person looking for 15 minutes of fame, much like every person with a beef toward United Airlines since the Dao incident.
I cannot speak for everyone else, but I personally have not lost
sight of the main issue, which is not "answering a simple question", it's "LEOs punitively detaining you for exercising your Constitutional rights under the 4th and 5th Amendments".
"Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?" was a pretty simple question, too, but look how many innocent lives were destroyed by it because of paranoia and fanaticism.
I must admit, if stopped at one of these Stassi checkpoints, I would immediately answer (through clenched teeth), "Yes, I am a citizen," and be sent on my merry way with a foul taste in my mouth. But I do not begrudge anyone who pushes back to defend the rights of the individual, because the intended results of such defense would benefit us all.
Personal liberties and individual rights are the foundation upon which this country was founded. They are its entire reason for existing, and they are the entire purpose behind having any sort of government at all. When government starts stripping them away for some purported "greater good" or "societal need" or, worst of all, "compelling government interest," we destroy the very thing that makes our country great in the first place. The greater good comes directly from the individual good - you cannot achieve any greater good when you compromise the individual good. It's like building a house with foundation blocks made of wet newspaper instead of concrete - it may look the same, but it'll wash away completely in the first heavy rain, or burn like a torch from a single spark.
Call me crazy, but I'm far more concerned about a government that tells me I have to surrender the things that keep me safe in order to keep me safe, give up the things which keep me free in order to remain free, than with trespassers, drug smugglers, or even terrorists sneaking in through the southern border. Even if these draconian measures like internal immigration checkpoints and invasive searches as a condition of travel worked, which they never have in all of human history, it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best, because we would have destroyed our country's soul to preserve its borders.
In two hundred years we've gone from "Give me liberty or give me death!" to "Anything for security!" Not an improvement, in my humble opinion. Not an improvement at all.
Originally Posted by
COSPILOT
In 1790, we didn't have a drug problem...
So what is the answer? Open the border to anyone with a pulse, stop the war on drugs? I don't know of many countries with such a policy, but I'm happy to be corrected. Come here legally or don't come at all.
We're not discussing border policies, we're discussing checkpoints set up 50 or even 100 miles away from the border - as much as a two-hour drive from the border.
I, too, am against illegal immigration, but stripping away the rights and freedoms that this country was specifically created to protect is not, nor has it ever been, the solution to any national problem, be it criminality, immigration, or even potential espionage (ask George Takei or any other victim of our WWII US concentration camps what they think of that kind of solution).
Whatever the solution to illegal border crossings may be, it lies AT THE BORDER, not 100 miles away from it.
Originally Posted by
studentff
My guess has always been that the 100-miles starts at border or a land/water point of entry and that there are many such ports along the shore of Lake Michigan. If the 100-miles were based on territorial waters and not the actual border, the zones around the coast would extend less than 100 miles inland.
I also suspect, but do not know for certain, that the zone should extend up the Mississippi river since I think there are recognized ports of entry along the river.
I doubt the specific boundaries of the constitution-free zone have ever been tested in court. And I suspect if DHS wanted to, they would claim anywhere within 100 miles of a theoretical air port of entry (i.e., runway) was constitution free.
Since that map was produced by ACLU and not by DHS, there is no way to know for sure that DHS claims the same area. However, going by the amount of government over-reach in the last century or so, I would not be a bit surprised if DHS looked at that map and said, "Yeah, that seems about right."
It appears to me that ACLU created the orange zone by offsetting a 100-mile buffer from the land mass edges, which is why the zone bends around Lake Michigan and the Chesapeake Bay; bad news for me if DHS uses a similar outline, since it encompasses virtually my entire home state of Maryland.
If DHS's version of the zone is similar to the ACLU map, they could theoretically set up these Stassi Stops anywhere on I-95, from the Canadian border to Miami, since the entire interstate and most of its subsidiaries (like the I-495 Capital Beltway around DC and the I-695 Baltimore Beltway and the I-295 Jacksonville Beltway) are inside the 100-mile zone on the map.
Even using a more logical 100-mile buffer that starts on the actual border - i.e. at the ocean's edge, with no jogs around the Chesapeake, Lake Michigan, or the Outer Banks, at least 2/3 of the I-95 network would still be within the 100-mile zone.