How did America’s police become a military force on the streets?

Are cops constitutional?

In a 2001 article for the Seton Hall Constitutional Law Journal, the legal scholar and civil liberties activist Roger Roots posed just that question. Roots, a fairly radical libertarian, believes that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t allow for police as they exist today..

When they have camo fatigues, M4 (full-auto) assault rifles, tanks (Tanks!!?, yes tanks), use grenades, cannons and gas then are they not soldiers?   Does the U.S. Constitution not forbid the use of soldiers, on the soil of the United States of America, from functioning as a police force in fact?

Unfortunately not. The Posse Comitatus act of 1878 specifically enjoined the   U.S. Army from acting as a police force (in the south). The U.S. Navy and eventually the Air Force were added to that prohibition. There is nothing in the Constitution.

To many police are armed and armored as soldiers are, but they are not the U.S. Army.  Consider it a loophole.

Fox News Special on Benghazi

‘When the Guy Comes with a Clipboard…’

by Ed Driscoll

“I can fight the bugs, I can fight the lack of rain, but when the guy comes with a clipboard what are you going to do?”, asks farmer who’s shutting down his business, thanks to the Obama FDA:

Bessemer called it quits out of frustration with pending federal food safety regulations that likely will require farmers to very specifically track their produce and how it is handled from seed to sale, among other things.

The new rules are part of the Food Safety Modernization Act, sweeping changes within the Food and Drug Administration aimed at making our food system safer by being able to pinpoint where contamination occurs. The federal law was passed in 2011, but how it will be implemented is still a work in progress.

It will be a few years before the regulations are finalized and a few more years before farms are required to follow them, but Bessemer believes there are just too many layers of government red tape and paperwork that would cost him too much.

At 70, Bessemer said he would rather throw in the towel than continue.

“We don’t want to quit, we were forced out of the business. We can’t spend enough money to comply,” he said. “We’ve been farming for 117 years. I’m the third generation and we’re being put out of business by the government. We can’t comply with all of the safety laws. We haven’t poisoned anybody with an ear of corn for 117 years and we’ve shipped it all over,” he said.

“I can fight the bugs, I can fight the lack of rain, but when the guy comes with a clipboard what are you going to do?” Bessemer said.

— “Bessemer Farms calls it quits, says new farm rules too cumbersome,” from Ohio.com (the Akron Beacon Journal Online), today. As Jon Gabriel of the Exurban League once tweeted in 2009, “Just finished Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man today. Obama’s team thinks it’s an economics textbook rather than a cautionary tale.”

I followed the link to the local news article and read this…

One of the biggest changes will be the number of records that farmers have to maintain, on everything from what trucks were used to transport produce, to what employees handled it and how they washed their hands.

Yes mommy I washed my hands and did my homework, may I watch TV?

Fuck this government!