SWAT = Gestapo

(The following is taken from an e-mail response to a forwarded article by John Whitehead of "The Rutherford Institute.")

There was a TV program on the "paramilitary-fication" of police action and the new creation of SWAT enforcement teams for all sorts of regulatory agencies, especially in the federal government. The notion of "kicking ass and taking names" while wearing "combat" gear is a powerful aphrodisiac for the authoritarians in our midst. The humorless "straight-arrows" going into and dominating law enforcement are scary. Important doctrines within the Bill of Rights are being shredded in the process. A lot of federal aid to law enforcement has emphasized and funded the SWAT mentality. "Order" is being emphasized over "law."

Fed up with the illusion of rampant crime pimped by politicians of evil intent (esp. suspected of certain "ethnic undesirables" (like immigrants)), "average Americans" are willing to tolerate (and smirk at) the "ass-kicking" approach to law enforcement, and those fed up with "legal technicalities" like banning the precipitous kicking in of doors of homes are thus supportive (until it happens to them). There has been (especially since Ray-Gun) a serious and deplorable judicial backlash against the Bill of Rights and the "Exclusionary Rule."

The likelihood of anal rape in prison is a source of great mirth, especially among most cops. Most judges are indifferent. The threat of it is frequently used by cops as a means of extorting confessions during interrogations.

Legislatures routinely ramp up maximum prison terms for offenses, fabricate more and more new crimes out of "whole cloth," and routinely convert misdemeanors to felonies. "Zero tolerance" is the rule rather than the exception.

Courts ROUTINELY enforce the abandonment or forfeiture of personal criminal-procedure rights by unwitting, naïve suspects, to their serious detriment. The recent show on HBO, "Hot Coffee," about the "'Stella' vs. McDonald's" case, also explored the routine forfeiture of personal civil-procedure rights by persons who seek to deal with credit-card companies, cell-phone companies, investment brokers, Internet host companies and other corporate entities who demand the use of services agreements that include forfeiture of rights to court trials and other procedural rights, and subordination to mandatory, binding arbitration (with familiar arbitrators selected exclusively by the corporations) instead. These clauses are being routinely enforced by courts now to relieve the "serious burden" on court dockets that could arguably be relieved by appointing and paying more judges with higher-tax dollars instead.

It is against public policy for a whore to seek judicial enforcement against a "john" of a contract for a sexual services rendered, but it is patently NOT a violation of public policy for law enforcement or corporations to induce the unwitting forfeiture of personal judicial rights! Go figure.

Those the police identify as "perps" are despised and presumed guilty by most of society. The notion of hurting them physically and mentally is very attractive, and the threat of convicting innocents with "railroad" justice is dismissed, so long as the presumed guilty are as cruelly treated as possible, both before conviction and certainly thereafter. Draconian punishments are NEVER enough in the eyes of many!

The tortures routinely administered by the military and CIA at Abu Ghraib during the presidential administration of George W. Bush were considered "appropriate" by many Americans who believed the victims "deserved" it for what happened on "September 11." The Obama Administration and Attorney General Eric Holder have done NOTHING about it ever since.

We are truly in dangerous times, MOSTLY because a majority of the US Supremes ARE indifferent to all of this as well.