TeaPartyWire.com – Tea Party News by and for Tea Party Members

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach

Posted: June 26th, 2012

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday on illegal immigration gives legislators in his home state a “green light” for a crackdown, but his fellow Republicans still aren’t all behind him.

Kobach, a former law professor who’s advised officials across the nation on get-tough policies on immigration, said he’s pleased with the high court’s ruling on an Arizona law he helped draft two years ago, even though the justices struck down three of the four provisions under attack. The justices kept in place a provision requiring police to check the immigration status of people stopped for other reasons if officers have a reasonable suspicion they’re in the U.S. illegally.

Kobach called the “show me your papers” provision the “core” of the Arizona law and said Kansas legislators can pursue a similar measure. He also noted that the Supreme Court ruling didn’t touch on issues that the state’s lawmakers have discussed, such as requiring government contractors or other businesses to use the federal E-Verify database to check the status of new employees.

“If Kansas wanted to take the two strongest steps, which would be an E-Verify requirement for the whole state and an arrest requirement like Arizona’s that we saw reviewed today, they have a green light to do so,” Kobach told The Associated Press in an interview.

But Kobach’s opponents in Kansas scoffed at his description of the high court ruling as a victory and said it’s likely to hinder any effort to enact proposals favored by Kobach. They noted that while the court spared the provision directing police to check people’s immigration status, the justices didn’t preclude legal challenges later when the law is more fully interpreted by Arizona’s courts.

Read More:  CBSNews.com

Source: TPT Submission

By: Stephen C. Webster

Posted: April 2nd,2012

I wonder if they would dare do this to a female Muslim):  This is like Abu Ghraib- prisoners have to be demeaned- the gov’t has to show who’s in charge.
Going forward from this week on, people arrested in the United States may face a mandatory strip search, even if their offense is minor and authorities don’t suspect them of smuggling any contraband.

That’s because U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy sided with the court’s conservatives on Monday, swinging the vote 5-4 in favor of allowing jail officials to conduct a strip search of anyone in their custody.

Those searches may now even be carried out on people who’ve only committed minor offenses like traffic violations or small drug possession, and in cases where there is nothing that meets the previous standard of “reasonable suspicion” that someone may be hiding something.

In its opinion (PDF), the court’s majority suggested that strip searches would make inmate populations safer by helping to stem the tide of drugs and weapons, and healthier by identifying early on inmates with injuries or infectious diseases.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the court’s dissenting minority, argued that strip searches are a “serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy,” which should only be used when absolutely necessary.

“I have found no convincing reason indicating that, in the absence of reasonable suspicion, involuntary strip searches of those arrested for minor offenses are necessary in order to further the penal interests mentioned,” he added. “And there are strong reasons to believe they are not justified.”

Monday’s decision sprang from the 2005 arrest of New Jersey resident Albert Florence. Florence was arrested after an officer pulled over his wife for speeding, only to discover that he had a warrant for an unpaid fine. After spending seven days in two different jails, being strip searched upon admittance at both, he was released after officials figured out that he’d already paid the fine.

Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority that Florence’s detention at the Burlington County Detention Center and the Essex County Correctional Facility “struck a reasonable balance between inmate privacy and the needs of the institutions” — which is to say, the court believes that inmates are entitled to virtually no right to privacy when that challenges the more pressing safety issues presented by managing a prison population.

SOURCE: Supreme Court signs off on strip searches for all arrestees | The Raw Story

Official Paper: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-945.pdf

This information is provided by PURE PURSUIT INTELLIGENCE CENTER, as a service to Military and Air Defense Communities.