You have the right to remain silent...for a couple weeks.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that law enforcement officials can repeatedly attempt to interrogate a suspect even after they've invoked the right to have an attorney present, "provided at least two weeks [have] passed since the initial attempt" and since the accused was released from police custody. This marks a departure from the nearly three decade-old rule preventing police from doing so.

The 1981 Edwards v. Arizona case set the legal precedent that when a suspect invoked the right to have counsel present during an interrogation, "a valid waiver of that right [could not] be established by showing only that he responded to police-initiated interrogation after being again advised of his rights;" furthermore, it established that the suspect was "not subject to further interrogation until counsel [had] been made available to him" unless the suspect himself initiated further contact with the police.

In other words, this prevented police from repeatedly contacting the accused in the absence of a lawyer or before they had met with one, which could potentially cause the suspect to incriminate himself by involuntarily or unknowingly waiving the previously invoked right. It in fact clearly stated that "a waiver of the right to counsel, once invoked, not only must be voluntary, but also must constitute a knowing and intelligent relinquishment of a known right or privilege."

Seven of nine justices agreed today to the arbitrary two-week time limit.

Justice John Paul Stevens voiced his objection. "The most troubling aspect of the court’s time-based rule is that it disregards the compulsion caused by a second (or third, or fourth) interrogation of an indigent suspect who was told that if he requests a lawyer, one will be provided for him. If [the police] cease questioning and then reinterrogate the suspect 14 days later without providing him with a lawyer, the suspect is likely to feel that the police lied to him and that he really does not have any right to a lawyer."

This is the second ruling in two days in favor of law enforcement officials with regard to Miranda rights. The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that officials can ad lib the Miranda warnings as long as "the warnings reasonably convey to a suspect his rights as required by Miranda."

Sources (in order of reference):

1. Christian Science Monitor

2. U.S. Supreme Court Center

3. Christian Science Monitor

Fox & Friends claim college "skews" your politcal beliefs to the left

February 14, 2010 - Fox & Friends' Clayton Morris cites a "study" by the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute to claim that a bachelor's degree "is more likely to skew a person's political beliefs to the liberal side of the spectrum," and that college "dumbs kids down when it comes to basic questions of civil literacy."

Morris brings on Tucker Carlson who claims that "if you take a bunch of young, impressionable students in an environment in which all authority figures have a certain point of view that they push on those students, those students absorb that point of view."

These claims assume that (A) all collegiate authority figures have a certain point of view; (B) that "certain point of view" is liberal, and (C) all collegiate authority figures "push" their point of view on students.

Morris, using costs for cover, then asks Carlson if it's "better to not go to college at all than to get this kind of an education," to which Tucker responds that it's "an open question" and that "you could definitely make a case for it."

Morris then asks Carlson if there are any flaws in the study. Carlson, though he admits he doesn't have the data or methodology in front of him" says that "it seems pretty straight forward."

The Fox video can be found here:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4016232/college-skews-political-spectrum

See where the Intercollegiate Studies Institute gets its funding here:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Intercollegiate_Studies_Institute#Funding

You can find many more examples of baseless claims, "mistakes" and lies by Fox here.

American Cell Phone Privacy at Risk

The Obama Administration recently stated that American citizens enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” with regard to obtaining cell phone tracking information from telecommunications providers. A federal appeals court will hear arguments in a case on Friday that would allow the government to obtain records indicating when or where calls were made or received, without a warrant or probable cause. Justice Department lawyers argue that “a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records,” and further that “one who does not wish to disclose his movements to the government need not use a cellular telephone.”  The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology will present counter arguments in favor of requiring the government to have probable cause (at the least) before records can be obtained.

Under United States constitutional law the expectation of privacy is a legal test defined by case law. The rule from decades-old court decisions has two requirements for successfully challenging a search or seizure as a violation of the Fourth Amendment:

• The person must have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy.
• The expectation must be one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable."

For example, it was previously ruled that a phone booth “is a temporarily private place whose momentary occupants' expectations of freedom from intrusion are recognized as reasonable.”

Sources:


1. CNET News

2. ACLU Blog of Rights

3. Cornell University Law School