wimsey wrote:
I guess I’m not surprised that you find sympathy for the constitutional sheriff proposition, since I’ve seen you write about your position on the 10th amendment before in this forum.
I’m out with my kid and my dog, so responses in this post will be a little off the cuff and without the article right in front of me.
The sheriff who is reported to have said “I am fucking God in this county” is not defending the Constitution against federal encroachment, he is on a power trip. Especially when his denial of that quote is based on an assertion that he would never compare himself to God, rather than the substantive response which should be no one individual member of government holds absolute power.
any sheriff that thinks it is solely up to him or her to decide whether something is constitutional or not is ignoring the basic concept of separation of powers. The Authority to determine the parameters of what is constitutional and what is not something that is left to the judiciary, and or Congress, not to a member of the executive branch. It doesn’t matter whether or not that sheriff is doing what his constituents want him to do.
Lastly, for this post at least, most civil asset forfeiture abuses seem to be committed by local law-enforcement – people like the sheriff and sheriffs deputies. Is your primary complaint in the original article you posted that it was the feds who took this action? Would you be OK with a civil asset forfeiture of someone from out of town driving through a county where a sheriff effected the seizure, and the local constituents wanted him to do so ?
Fair points.
Sheriff might certainly be on a power trip. But the intent of the article was to show this movement as Sheriff's on power trips. Hard to know how much tar was painted on the sheriff by the writer. Sheriffs that are asshole meglomaniacs probably can't hide those attributes from their voters for long.
Re. Sheriff deciding what is Constitutional isn't the sheriff's purview. Sure, but that's a pretty broader scope than the average sheriff operates. We should separate words from deeds by ignoring the rhetoric. If a sheriff, and by extension the locals, doesn't want to enforce some law in his county, the state will either let it go, or the wheels of change will come to the county and crush him. I can imagine scenarios where there's a lot of sympathy for the county's stand on the matter and the state lets it go. But hot button issues that would stoke national outrage would get fixed real quick in that county.
It does matter what the constituents want in that county, as long as it doesn't conflict with the state or federal constitutions + amendments. If there is conflict with a SCOTUS decision, then the issue needs to go back to SCOTUS, right after they reread the Constitution.
The outrage re. ignoring federal law is all BS. We are only outraged when federal laws we like are ignored. We're perfectly happy when the president or regulatory agencies ignore federal laws in ways that appeal to us. We have no values, no "rule of law". We have only interest groups. And the will twist, spindle, mutilate the Constitution and Federal law all day long to suit their whims.
Books @ Amazon "If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart