Have you seen Habeas Corpus?

This is Habeas Corpus.

On October 17, 2006, he went missing without a trace. Last seen in Washington, D.C., his current whereabouts are unknown. Where is he? We don't know.

But we do know Habeas Corpus needs our help. What can you do? Get involved and help us restore Habeas Corpus to his rightful place in our Constitution!

What is Due Process of Law?

DUE PROCESS - The idea that laws and legal proceedings must be fair. The Constitution guarantees that the government cannot take away a person's basic rights to 'life, liberty or property, without due process of law.' Courts have issued numerous rulings about what this means in particular cases.

More Legal Definition of Due Process at The 'Lectric Law Library's Lexicon.

How does the Fourteenth Amendment apply due process to the states? See the Annotated Constitution at Cornell Law School:

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
RIGHTS GUARANTEED
PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES OF CITIZENSHIP,
DUE PROCESS AND EQUAL PROTECTION
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
SECTION 1. RIGHTS GUARANTEED

Gangs

Gang Prosecutions - Politically Correct Prosecutions going after Low-hanging fruit

At the above link, Public Defender Dude begins his post like this:

"I've written about it before, but it's become ever more absurd where I practice law. As noted in this Los Angeles Times article, the Los Angeles DA is filing ever more cases with "gang allegations" against people, no matter what the case, increasing exponentially the amount of time people are getting in prison.

"First of all, what am I talking about? California has passed a number of laws aimed at gang members over the years, generally in Penal Code Section 186.22. They have basically made it so that if a gang member commits a crime, the punishment is significantly larger than if any other member of society does it. Fair enough, one may say, gang members are wreaking havoc on society."

Give the whole post a read. It is by someone in the trenches.

Purpose

The idea behind this blog is the political significance of the wave of new regulatory laws. Most obvious is sex offender laws, but there is much more. Regulations in general subvert the Constitution and the Bill of Rights like the criminal law never could. Usually these new regulations are enacted by taking advantage of some public outcry or another after the airing, day after day, of some high profile case. The public's emotions are stirred and they are blinded. Politicians feed the fire by lying while pandering for votes, further fueling "times of heat and violence."

"Nothing is more common than for a free people, in times of heat and violence, to gratify momentary passions by letting into the government principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves. Of this kind is the doctrine of disqualification, disfranchisement, and banishment by acts of the legislature. The dangerous consequences of this power are manifest. If the legislature can disfranchise any number of citizens at pleasure by general descriptions, it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partisans, and establish an aristocracy or an oligarchy; if it may banish at discretion all those whom particular circumstances render obnoxious, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense." - Alexander Hamilton.

Feel free to post links to articles and examples that support this theme, be they on moral panic, political pandering, vigilante injustice, studies on the harms or ineffectiveness of some laws, or notes on how they are subversive to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Or email me if you would rather.