[Mpls] RE: Against the Law for Federal Troops to Act as Domestic Peace Officers

[wmmarks]

Ray Marshall wrote:

>We live in a country where the law is deemed sacred and must be observed.
>  
>
Sez who?

Even while seemingly doing our best, we sometimes make really dumb laws. 
Maybe that's even the case for 50% of the laws. For example, it was 
fewer than three years ago, I think, that MN finally removed from the 
books a state law saying it was a punishable offense to leave this state 
wearing a duck on your head. You may not have known that law, since it 
would never have occurred to you to leave the state wearing a duck on 
your head. We're talking real ducks here, dead or alive, not plush toys 
or funny hats.

Further, we have several types of laws. In MN we run heavy to the nanny 
laws. It is actually impossible to get up in the morning, take on the 
day, and go back to bed without deliberately or accidentally going afoul 
of the law. There are so many laws, no one knows them all, including 
police, jurists, legislators of all stripes. As an ordinary Joe or Jo, 
you haven't got a snowball's chance of knowing them all. But that's no 
excuse...under the law.

>Thus, hundreds or more die and suffer because it is "against the law" for a
>soldier to provide law enforcement domestically.
>  
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If it's all the same to you, I'd kinda like to keep this one in place. 
I'm fairly certain it was added to the legal magnum opus to keep us from 
devolving into what's known as a 'tin pot dictatorship,' a.k.a. 'a 
banana republic.' And don't kid yourself, we're only a hair away from 
that at all times.

>Yet state and local police and public employees are ordered under threat of
>losing their jobs that they are not to enforce the law making it a crime to
>be in this country without proper documentation.
>  
>
Man, you are stepping into really deep waters here. Actually, city 
police are in no way organized or funded well enough to take on a task 
with such vast requirements. That's why someone invented the INS, a 
federal task. However, La Migra does not apply that law even- handedly. 
There are a zillion Irish men and women here without a green card. There 
are Brits without green cards. I would venture to say that there are 
Western Europeans of assorted stripe without green cards. I've never 
heard a story of one being given the boot, unless a specific country 
asked for the person and even then not always. Cubans come in by the 
boatload, if the boats make it, and we welcome them with open arms 
because we decided to make Fidel the boogy man. I believe we're honked 
at Fidel still because he tossed the mafia back on us rather than put up 
with them down there.

>>From another thread this week, apparently, I can steal stuff from unlocked
>cars without any worry about being arrested.
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That's always been true. The caveat is don't get caught. The thing that 
honked off Shegstad (apparently this guy is way into normal on the human 
scale of such things) was the effrontery with which they did it in broad 
daylight. So long as a cop didn't eyeball the window being smashed and 
the radio being removed, the cops are stuck with loitering with intent 
or lurking with evil intentions or some such as a reason to arrest. 
Excuse me? I got out to the alley or the sidewalk cause there are a 
bunch of noisy doofs standing around loud talking and acting the fool. 
At that moment, I'm lurking with evil intent. I wanna tell them off and 
call their parentage and upbringing into question. You want a cop to 
take me to jail for that? How will that improve my respect for the cop's 
authority? Or the rule of law?

I think it's interesting that the man who observed this behavior decided 
immediately to call the cops. He couldn't go down the alley and ask them 
what they were up to? Or opine that they needed to Keep steppin and find 
another form of entertainment?

>It would be nice to know which laws I have to observe, and which I don't
>have to worry about.
>  
>
Well, it depends. If yer feelthy reech, pretty much the sky's the limit. 
If you're upper middle class and pulled something really boneheaded and 
violent, the courts might slap your hand and give you some consequences 
for poor form. If you're petit bourgeois, you'll get consequences of a 
doable nature, though if you resort to violence against someone other 
than your spouse, you'll do time. That could change if you pull some 
white collar crime badly and the district attorney has a bigger 
political career in mind. But if you're poor, they'll slam you, 
particularly if you're stupid to boot, arrogant and diffident with a 
foul mouth.  It's goes double if you are known to the beat cops as a 
royal pain in the neck to all and sundry, themselves included. Unless, 
of course, you can claim chronic inebriation so you can run through the 
social service system hoops instead. That's if you're caucasian, born 
and bred here. There are regional variations on this theme. If you are 
not caucasian, it's a whole nuther ball game.

WizardMarks, Central