STRAIGHT DOPE: VANDALIZING THE 4TH AMENDMENT

Richard Kimble, call your office The Fourth Amendment vandals are at it
again. As Patrick Poole reported Wednesday in WorldNetDaily, a new bill
threatens to make the American people insecure in their persons, houses,
papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Apparently, the U.S. Marshall Service -- the federal agency that stars
Tommy Lee Jones -- wants to expand its search powers in fugitive cases to
more efficiently nab the Richard Kimbles of the world. The proposed
"Fugitive Apprehension Act" would allow government agents to seize
documents such as bank and credit records, Internet Service Provider
records and notes scribbled on Macy's receipts without constitutionally
required search warrants or subpoenas from a court; instead, agents will be
able to get subpoenas directly from the attorney general or her
subordinates (I hope that doesn't include office janitors).

Worse still, one provision of the bill allows agents to nab these documents
and never let suspects know about the heist. "In other words," explained
David Kopel in a National Review article on the new bill, "if your wife's
second cousin never showed up in court for his drunk-driving trial, the
government could look at your bank records, telephone records and Internet
records -- without a court order and without ever telling you about most of
the searches."

So much for privacy.

What's more, "There is absolutely no reason for this provision, because any
agency pursuing a fugitive can go to court and get the search warrants they
need almost immediately," said Kopel in a WND interview. "What this
provision does is cut the court out of the process, which is a very
dangerous precedent. The Fourth Amendment envisions courts issuing
warrants, not unaccountable bureaucrats."

If you would like to sound off to your representative and senator about
this dangerous measure, visit our legislative action center.

Your tax dollars a work As columnist Thom Marshall sat in court waiting for
a jury's decision to decide on the competency of a drug defendant, he
wondered how much cash was being sucked up by the enterprise of justice
that day. Using the low-end salary numbers he provides in his Sept. 22
Huston Chronicle column for the various officials involved, let's work it out:

According to Marshall, the court-appointed attorney will get, at the
outside, $1,100 for the case; we'll drop it down to 1,000 for something
even, then figure that with seven pre-trial appearances before even getting
to the competency hearing, he probably scored no more than $125 per day on
the job.

An assistant district attorney makes about $47,100 per year, so with 260
working days in a trip around the sun, that works out to about $181 a day.

At $33,800, the expert witness for the prosecution (a psychologist) makes
about $130.

The expert witness for the defense (psychologist No. 2) expected to earn
$750 for his contribution.

Our heaviest earner is, of course, the judge at $111,000, which makes his
daily serving around $426.

Making a little less than half the impact on the ledger than the judge, the
court reporter, at $52,020 a year, takes about $200 a day.

The court clerk sees his yearly $19,164 divvied daily down to $73.

As for bailiffs, assuming there's only one, at $28,104 that figures out to
roughly $108 for a rough day's work.

The on-case mental health worker (for the defendant, of course) scores
around $22,048 a year, making her daily draw total about $84.

And don't forget our dutiful jurors; for 12 peers, each scoring a 6-buck
per diem, the court shells out $72 per day.

So, totaling all of those numbers, for just the people mentioned, the court
shelled out $1,949 that day on the competency hearing -- not counting
things like the overhead (gas, electric, etc.). Almost two thousand
dollars. What was the defendant accused of? Marshall provides a tidy list:
"Did she kill or injure or threaten to hurt someone? Did she rob, burgle,
cheat, forge checks or steal?" No, as it turned out, the charge leveled
against the woman had more to do with going with a man -- who later turned
out to be an undercover cop -- to purchase all of $10 worth of crack
cocaine. Two grand for 10 bucks.

Oh, and it turns out, she's mentally incompetent -- can't stand trial, anyway.

Selling dope to get stone Not that going after harmless types isn't a
hallmark of the drug war. Along with all the bullet-drooling street thugs
that get clotheslined by the long blue arm of the law, a good number of
innocuous people get caught up in all of the hubbub, too.

Take George Edwards, 74-year-old pensioner in New Zealand. When the local
housing authority refused his request to extend his driveway so he didn't
have to walk in the mud, he took the matter into his own hands.

To raise the funds needed to purchase the cement for the project, according
to the Oct. 12 New Zealand Herald, Edwards turned his green thumb to
raising and selling marijuana. He earned enough to finish the job, but
police arrested him before the drive was completed. Sentenced this week to
a suspended jail term, Edwards was, all things considered, happy. "Who is
going to put an old fellow like me away?" he asked.

"I got a rap on the fingers for being naughty boy," he added, saying that,
"I just put it down to another experience in life."

How come the drug warriors aren't half so forgiving?

St. Smack Some people take their drug trafficking fairly seriously -- much
more than George Edwards. Some even take it religiously, according to
Lowell Bergman, series reporter for PBS's fabulous Frontline documentary,
"Drug Wars," which ran Monday and Tuesday of this week.

How religious? "Well, when you travel to a place like Culiacan, Mexico,"
says Bergman, "it's a shock to find the drug industry so ingrained in the
popular culture that there's a patron saint of drug smuggling -- Jesus
Malverde."

I wonder what you pray to a saint like that:

Our heroin, which art in balloons Swallowed be thy game Thy delivery come,
thy sale be done On corner as it is in street ... I'm curious about how
that plays in Sunday School.