RAPE IN THE NAME OF THE WAR ON DRUGS

Sometimes something smells so bad everybody wants to do something about it.

Imagine, if you can, these political odd couples: Henry Hyde and Barney
Frank, Bob Barr and Bill Delahunt. They got together the other day to work
on eradicating a really bad stink.

The Hyde/Frank/Barr/Delahunt coalition went after the rape of the
Constitution that allows the feds to seize the property of the innocent in
the name of making war on drugs. They persuaded the House to strip the feds
of this power, which the feds have brazenly arrogated unto themselves in
defiance of Jefferson and Madison, and the vote -- 375 to 48 -- was not
even close.

Under current law, the feds and the cops can seize your property on the
weakest and flimsiest of evidence (even on no evidence at all), taking your
car, your cash, your home and anything else they "suspect" of having been
used in the commission of a crime, regardless of whether you're ever
charged with a crime. How this squares with the constitutional guarantee of
due process --that you have to be found guilty of an offense before you can
be punished -- has never been explained. In their arrogance, the feds
figure they don't owe anybody an explanation. The founding fathers put the
Constitution in plain English, thinking this would be the only protection
the citizen would ever need, but they never imagined the talent that modern
lawyers have for obfuscation and maiming the work of their betters.

The example cited to the House Judiciary Committee was that of a Nevada
charter pilot, a man with a perfect record for obeying the law and whose
only crime was trying to make an honest living for his family, who lost his
plane when the feds found drugs in the luggage of a paying passenger. The
pilot did not know the passenger and the pilot was never charged with a
crime. (Would the feds try this shakedown with American, Delta or United?)
Nevertheless, he had to get a lawyer to retrieve his plane, and before he
could get it back he lost his business, was forced into bankruptcy and had
to sign an agreement that he would not sue the government for the $100,000
damage they inflicted on his plane.

And it's not just the feds. Only this week, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette
in Little Rock detailed a vast -- and perfectly legal -- scam by state
law-enforcement authorities in several Arkansas counties to seize cars,
houses and other properties. The sheriff in one county distributed seized
cars to members of his family, and in another county expensive cars were
distributed to police officers. One officer had so many expensive cars
parked around his house the hound dogs could hardly trace a route to the
front porch to find a place to sleep. When a wad of cash was accidentally
found in the vest pocket of a sheriff's deputy after he searched a house he
said he just forgot he had put it there. His explanation sufficed. Naturally.

One district attorney has gone to prison already; since most scams are
merely winked at we can only imagine what excesses he must have been guilty
of. (We can hope that he is receiving punishment to fit his crimes and that
he has been put into the general prison population, to take thrilling
showers with bad guys he sent there ahead of him.)

The defenders of the current law cite the harm and damage done to society
by the drug dealers these seizures are meant to punish. "Americans," says
Rep. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican, "don't want to grant
extraordinary protection to the financial henchmen of drug lords."

Well, certainly not, and in his past career as a squeaky clean,
hard-hitting U.S. district attorney in a place (Fort Smith) with a long
history of dealing with the dregs and scum of society, Asa Hutchinson
learned the hard way never to give a bad guy an even break. But every D.A.
also learns that cops and prosecutors who deal with dregs and scum are
invariably tempted to adapt to the environment, and sometimes the moral
line between the pursuer and the pursued is a faint one. There's nothing
now to prevent a crooked cop from, for example, stealing a car to order.
Cops and prosecutors, like dregs and scum, bear watching, for their own
good as well as ours. (But mostly for ours.)

Some prosecutors, terrified that someone will break up the party, are
trying to portray the Hyde/Frank/Barr/Delahunt effort as an attempt to go
easy on drug dealers. The war of drugs, so called, has become a cover for a
lot of unsavory things, and the soldiers of fortune managing the war try to
deflect any criticism of strategy as evidence of being soft on crime --
much like the classic City Hall dodge where the mayor always threatens to
shut down the orphanage if someone suggests cutting taxes.

Busting drug dealers is important, but not at the cost of busting the
Constitution. Now it's up to the Senate to follow the lead of Henry Hyde
and his unusual allies in the House.