PrairiePundit

NY Times: 2 Education Dept. Picks Raise Fears on Civil Rights Enforcement The two selections for high-profile posts, both lawyers, have legal records on sexual assault that have alarmed some advocates. Sexual assaults are a crime and not a Title IX problem.  By pushing educational institutions into policing sexual misconduct the Obama administration allowed kangaroo courts and Star Chamber proceedings to take over and in the process denied due process to the accused and to the alleged victim.  In short, the education system is ill-equipped to deal with the situation and should be turning these cases over to the local district attorney.

NY Post Editorial: A lawsuit out of Colorado could bring a screaming halt to a booming injustice industry — college star chambers for sexual-assault cases. Grant Neal is suing Colorado State University-Pueblo for kicking him out over sex that the woman agrees was fully consensual. More important, he’s also suing the federal Education Department for virtually ordering the school to deprive him of his due-process rights. CSUP found Grant guilty of sexually assaulting a trainer (also a student) and suspended for him for several years. Yet the trainer repeatedly said that their relationship was consensual. She told an administrator in the training program, “I’m fine and I wasn’t raped.” She also says she told the school’s investigator, “He’s a good guy. He’s not a rapist, he’s not a criminal, it’s not even worth any of this hoopla.” She never claimed an assault. But a peer in the Athletic Training Program saw a hickey on her neck and reported a rape. The school then duly ignore...

Fox News: A physics major one semester away from graduation is suing to stop University of Texas-Austin from expelling him based on the unproven accusation he sexually assaulted a woman in a drunken, off-campus encounter. In one of the latest cases of male college students turning to the courts after being punished by public universities for being accused of sexual assaults, the 21-year-old man identified as John Doe in legal papers claims the school is violating his Constitutional right to due process. His alleged victim, who did not attend the school, never filed a police report, according to his lawyer, yet the school took action based on her father’s complaint. ... The alleged incident occurred on March 6, 2015, after a night of heavy drinking at a house party where Doe met two unnamed women, according to the lawsuit. The three spent the night at an off-campus apartment belonging to one of the women, where Doe had sex with one woman that night and the other the next morning, ...

Engadget: If Apple loses, your home could be the next thing that's unlocked Access to your security cameras would be just a judge order away. Acourt can already order access to evidence in your home if the prosecution can prove probable cause.  This has always been true.  There is really no good reason why Apple should be an exception to standard lawful orders of a court. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides, "[t]he 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 ." ... Courts already routinely order access to security cameras.  An Apple loss will not change that.  If it is believed that the system may contain evidence it can be ordered to be produced.  ...

Glenn Harlan Reynolds provides three examples of American resistance to the ruling elites.  First mentioned is the push back against an attempt by the Department of Homeland Security to track cars using a national database of licenses.  Then there was the visceral reaction to an attempt by the FCC to monitor news rooms in an intrusive way that seemed a clear violation of the 1st Amendment.  He also discusses the passive aggressive resistance of Connecticut gun owners to registration requirements for existing "assault" weapons.

Gordon Crovitz: Technology has changed how information flows, how people communicate, and even the meaning of "friend," which has become a verb. Now, add to the imperial reach of technology the power to rewrite constitutional protections. A case argued last week in the Supreme Court hinges on what Americans consider "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. Not even Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has always correctly anticipated how much privacy people expect, so imagine how hard this is for nine people trained as lawyers, not engineers or online marketers. The justices did their best. The facts of  U.S. v. Antoine Jones  are that District of Columbia police, working with the FBI, suspected a nightclub owner of being a drug dealer. They installed cameras near Antoine Jones's nightclub, got his cellphone records, and attached a GPS tracking device to his Jeep Grand Cherokee. In 2005, acting on the informa...

Image via Wikipedia NY Times: The police do not need a warrant to enter a home if they smell burning marijuana, knock loudly, announce themselves and hear what they think is the sound of evidence being destroyed, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in an 8-to-1 decision. The issue as framed by the majority was a narrow one. It assumed there was good reason to think evidence was being destroyed, and asked only whether the conduct of the police had impermissibly caused the destruction. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said police officers do not violate the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches by kicking down a door after the occupants of an apartment react to hearing that officers are there by seeming to destroy evidence. ... That sounds like a reasonable search to me. It would be unreasonable if they had no suspicion that evidence was being destroyed, for example if no one was home. Related articles Winning the War on Drugs (slog.thestranger.c...

Image via Wikipedia Washington Times: A sharply-divided federal appeals court has rejected a Justice Department bid to overturn a ruling saying the government's use of GPS technology to track a suspect violates the Fourth Amendment . In a case closely watched by national civil liberties groups, the 5-4 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Friday came three months after a three-judge panel reversed the life sentence of man convicted of running a drug ring from a D.C. nightclub. Lawyers for the defendant, Antoine Jones, had argued that the government's use of GPS technology violated his " reasonable expectation of privacy ." During the summer, the panel ruled that police needed to get a warrant when using GPS to keep track of a vehicle. In an opinion written by U.S. Circuit Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg , the panel said the GPS data proved "essential to the government's case." Judge Ginsburg also wrote that a...

Washington Times: Ruling that federal agents erred in attaching a satellite tracking device to a vehicle without a search warrant, a federal appeals court Friday reversed the life sentence of man accused of running a major Washington drug ring. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District found that the government's use of GPS technology to track the defendant Antoine Jones's Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment. Civil liberties groups that aided in the appeal of Jones, whose case involved the largest cocaine seizure in city history, called the ruling an important legal victory for privacy rights. The three-judge ruling called the GPS information key to the federal prosecution of Jones, who owned Club Levels in Northeast Washington across the street from the Metropolitan Police Department's Fifth District headquarters. "The GPS data were essential to the government's case," the court ruled. "By combining them with Jones's cell-phone records the ...