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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the they-won't-come-for-me dept.

Congress just passed, and Trump signed, a law that makes all properties adjacent to the rail system operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, Constitution free zones.

From TFA on zerohedge.com:

"In performing its duties, the Commission, through its Board or designated employees or agents, may: Enter upon the WMATA Rail System and, upon reasonable notice and a finding by the chief executive officer that a need exists, upon any lands, waters, and premises adjacent to the WMATA Rail System, including, without limitation, property owned or occupied by the federal government, for the purpose of making inspections, investigations, examinations, and testing as the Commission may deem necessary to carry out the purposes of this MSC Compact, and such entry shall not be deemed a trespass."

As we all know, the standard in the 4th Amendment is a particularized warrant based on probable cause, "reasonable notice and need" as determined by the cops (i.e. agency chief), is not the same thing at all.

We already have constitution free zones within 100 100 miles of any border, and this provides a convenient framework to do a similar thing along any rail line (or road) so the Feds can liberate the center of the country from any form of Constitutional protection. Anyway ... the 4th Amendment is already dead at this point, but its piecemeal demise should provide a useful education for those clamoring for the demise of the 1st.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday August 28 2017, @02:36PM (7 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday August 28 2017, @02:36PM (#560252)

    You vastly and horribly underestimate the effectiveness of an armed populace. The US military wouldn't stand a chance in hell against its citizens (even if you could get them to take up arms against their friends and family).

    You vastly and horribly over-estimate the effectiveness of an armed populace.

    Let's say, for the sake of argument, that every American civilian ages 16-60 has an AR-15 and knows how to use it. And let's say the US government is doing something so outrageous that a large group of this armed populace decide to take up arms in revolt. They will immediately run into all sorts of problems:
    1. Most of the populace has not joined in their revolt, and will be supplying the government with information, supplies, and possibly volunteering to fight.
    2. The government has a giant technological advantage that your weapons are utterly powerless against. To name a few that we know of: tanks, artillery, submarines, bombers, missiles, drones. Now, some of them, you might be able to improvise some sort of way to deal with, but you're at a substantial disadvantage.
    3. Your communications, such as you have, can be easily monitored by your enemy. That means you cannot coordinate attacks in a useful way.
    4. The government has established spying capabilities, and will likely have an easy time getting their spies into your rag-tag revolt. So when you're trying to plan that fantastic surprise attack on a convoy, the government now knows exactly when and where you will attack. Your revolutionaries will probably spend a fair amount of time fighting each other over who's a spy.
    5. The government has established logistics that enable them to keep their troops well-supplied. You don't. When you're out of ammo, you're out of ammo. When your equipment breaks, it can't be replaced. And if you think you will be able to just buy what you need from retailers in what is now a war zone, well think again.
    6. The government has a substantial civilian infrastructure for handling affairs well behind the front lines that have nothing to do with fighting the war. Keeping the power on, the streets safe from criminals, the roads in good repair, and so forth. If the war goes on for any substantial length of time, that's going to create all sorts of problems in the territory your revolutionaries have managed to control.
    7. The government has international diplomatic connections that you don't. If for some reason you were getting even close to presenting a serious threat of winning, it's likely the rest of NATO would do something about that.

    And if you don't understand this, consider the time when a substantial portion of the US, under the leadership of popular and well-established political and military leaders, attempted armed rebellion. They lost, badly, for all the reasons I just cited.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 28 2017, @03:06PM (4 children)

    Consider carefully what would happen if only one out of ten citizens decided to make life hell on the government. Consider also that none of the military agree with the dissenters and bring their bases and weapons of war with them. Just regular people with a single deer rifle and a single box of ammo for it each. Think on it for a while. How much trouble can one person with a gun make? Now multiply that by thirty million.

    There's no need to be organized. There's no need to communicate. There's no need to create supply lines. There's no need to occupy or control territory. All that has to happen for the most powerful military on earth to get its shit pushed in is for one out of every thirty dissenters to go about their daily business until they see a chance to kill one military member. No big assaults or anything. Just kill one for every thirty of them that dies or gets captured.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 28 2017, @03:35PM (3 children)

      by Thexalon (636) on Monday August 28 2017, @03:35PM (#560279)

      Consider carefully what would happen if only one out of ten citizens decided to make life hell on the government.

      Part of my reasoning, which you are carefully leaving out of the equation, is that the other nine out of ten citizens might decide to do something about the one out of ten citizens. Like, say, calling 911 and reporting that they observed you shooting the military member you decided to take out.

      There's no need to be organized. There's no need to communicate.

      Then how is it that all your gun-toting citizens know to shoot military members at every opportunity? No successful armed resistance to anything in the history of humanity has done so without organization and communication.

      All that has to happen for the most powerful military on earth to get its shit pushed in is for one out of every thirty dissenters to go about their daily business until they see a chance to kill one military member. No big assaults or anything. Just kill one for every thirty of them that dies or gets captured.

      Your numbers assume you are up against only the active military. You aren't.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 28 2017, @04:37PM (2 children)

        Other citizens don't matter once the deed's done.

        Nope, no communication needs to happen. All it takes is one out of every ten (which isn't even close to half as many guns as we have) people to decide this government is finished within the same decade, and it's finished. There's nothing you can do about them beforehand because beforehand they are all perfectly law-abiding citizens.

        No, my numbers assume active, reserves, and guard. They do not assume police because there aren't enough police to matter. Right now, and every cop knows this, they police the citizenry only because the citizenry wants them to. It wouldn't take even one in a hundred saying "fuck this" and every police officer in the nation would either down arms, switch sides, or die within a week.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @09:02PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @09:02PM (#560506)

          ok, so it works when you are john rambo and 1 in 10 people are of a like mind. If you and they aren't, and even if you all have amassed a good amount of loot to at least get one shot out that counts, there is no respawn point after your insurrection fails. your game is over. you won't know if you won; you'll just be in a body bag.

          Most people are not willing to die for a cause, unless the choices are clear that it will be worse if they did nothing and lived -- worse for themselves, worse for people they love or care for. You haven't presented that scenario effectively enough for us all to take into account motivated vigilantes into your percentage and success rate.

  • (Score: 2) by t-3 on Monday August 28 2017, @03:52PM (1 child)

    by t-3 (4907) on Monday August 28 2017, @03:52PM (#560284)

    You correctly make the point that the population is not homogenous, but you fail to realize that neither is the government. Every federal, state, county, city employee/appointee/elected official will be making their own choice about where they stand. Same goes for the military. And I assure you, as soon as the military uses their "technological advantage" and bombs US citizens on US soil, revolutionaries will be coming out of the woodwork.

    • (Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:38AM

      by dry (223) on Tuesday August 29 2017, @01:38AM (#560623) Journal

      Well yes, there will be all kinds of people supporting the government shooting those evil liberals, I mean they're not even really Americans.