A Charter Of Negative Liberties

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Words, just meaningless antiquated words

The Washington Times and one of its former journalists on Thursday sued the Department of Homeland Security, accusing federal agents of illegally seizing the newspaper’s reporting materials during the execution of a search warrant in an unrelated case.

In a motion filed in federal court in Greenbelt, The Times and reporter Audrey Hudson asked a judge to force the federal agency to return all reporting files and documents it seized from Ms. Hudson’s home office during a raid in early August.

The newspaper alleged that federal agents accompanying Maryland State Police on the raid took materials from Ms. Hudson’s office that were not covered by the search warrant that authorized the collection solely of evidence about guns and a potato launcher allegedly possessed by her husband, Paul Flanagan.

The seized materials included documents the newspaper had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act as well as notes and memos that identified confidential sources from a series of investigative stories that exposed problems inside the Homeland Security Department’s Federal Air Marshal Service.

… Ms. Hudson’s home was raided by Maryland State Police at 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 6. The investigators, including Miguel Bosch, a federal agent with the Homeland Security’s Coast Guard Investigative Service, had a warrant to search for unregistered firearms and a potato launcher belonging to Ms. Hudson’s husband. To date, Mr. Flanagan has not been charged with any wrongdoing in the case.

The warrant did not give investigators permission to seize personal records and documents unrelated to the firearms investigation, the newspaper’s court filing argued.

An evidence log from Maryland State Police shows that on Sept. 3, the documents were removed from the evidence holding room by a federal agent and returned an hour later, but the log gives no record of what was done with the documents and why they were removed.

Remember the uproar about Jonah Goldberg’s “smiley face” of Liberal facism?

Doesn’t sound so far-fetched now, does it?

One Response to “A Charter Of Negative Liberties”

1. Kathy Kinsley says:

   November 23, 2013 at 6:49 pm

   They need to go read The Bill of No Rights.

   There are a couple of things in there I don’t quite agree with – it was written by a Large L Libertarian and I disagree completely with them on foreign policy. But. I think it has a LOT of GOOD points. 😀