Re: "adjust your attitude with their billy club" (fwd)

Forwarded message:

> Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 01:36:56 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Alan Horowitz <alanh@infi.net>
> Subject: Re: "adjust your attitude with their billy club"
> 
> "Given the loss of privacy tolerated by 99.9999% of American citizens in 
> the past twenty years, no one has a right to complain about the 
> government taking new powers for itself."
> 
> You cannot have it both ways. If you are free to define what is or is not 
> a public nuisance when you do it; likewise am I.

			AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION 
 
	Articles in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the 
United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the 
Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the 
original Constitution. 
 
 
				ARTICLE IX. 
 
	The enumeration of the Constitution, of certain rights, shall 
not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. 
 
 
 
				ARTICLE X. 
 
	The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, 
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, 
or to the people. 
 
 
 
[The first ten amendments went into effect on 15 December 1791.]

<<  9th & 10th AMendments to the Conmstitution >>

Cute, you left out the Third.

We are referring to the Sovereign power of the State of Washington to 
allocate to the municipality of Seattle, a general Police Power to 
maintain the Peace.  Every lawyer seems to think that Seattle has the 
power to forbid people from using sidewalks as latrines and kitchen sinks.

I am in bed with the government, so I have better knowledge than most of 
the people on this list, about how bad it is. Nonetheless, I recall the 
aphorism from the Talmud: "Pray for the health of the government, lest 
the people eat other alive".

If someone wants to dress shabbily, go ahead, I'm sure you're making a
powerful and meaningful statement of your devotion to liberty. I don't
recall saying otherwise.  I might secretly recall the TRUE and
OVERWHELMING poverty I've seen in the Third World, which didn't prevent
the barely-fed mothers from assuring that their kid's third-hand,
threadbare school uniforms were nevertheless clean and pressed.  Everyone
has different standards of pride. Some people don't EVER say "please", or
"thank you". Suit yourself. 

If you want to walk into the public library after a six-month moratorium 
on bathing - well, the courts are divided on this, but _I_ stand for the 
proposition that this is an assault on the other patrons and I will lobby 
_my_ city councilman for there to be rules against it.

If you want to blast your Walkman into your own ear through an earphone, 
go ahead, blow your hearing away, perhaps (insh'allah) it will somehow 
operate to prevent you from depositing your genes into the next 
generation.

But if you want to play your boombox loud near me, make damn sure you do
it behind soundproof walls. Where I live, the cops will respond to that 
kind of complaint and shut down the nuisance, with nightsticks if need be 
(in my little rural area, it's seldom necessary). Maybe you California or 
NYC folks don't have police forces that will mitigate nuisances. Enjoy 
your progressive radical-chic neighborhood, folks.