The presumption of innocence is something not paid much respect – or even given much thought – anymore. Everyone is guilty – of everything. No matter that you or I haven’t actually done anything.
It is just a matter of accusation.
The finger now points at every driver – and soon, at every new car buyer – who is to be presumed “drunk” without the bother of conviction.
Or even a probable-cause-free sobriety checkpoint.
Senate Democrats – and some might-as-well-be Democrats who identify as Republicans – have inserted language in the $1 trillion “infrastructure” bill peristaltically making its way through the Senate colon that would require every new car sold within 10 years be equipped with what you used to have to be convicted of DWI to have to have installed in your car:
An alcohol-detecting interlock of some kind that disables the vehicle and prevents it from being driven by a “drunk” driver – the latter to be defined presumptively as every driver.
And on the basis of ever-attenuating standards of “drunkenness,” which now encompasses the drinking of as little as a single beer or even less, in states that have lowered their Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) thresholds defining it at .05 or even less (for those under 21). No evidence of actual impairment being necessary to convict.
It is to be imposed on the same principle that “masks” are imposed upon people who aren’t sick.
But they could be.
Since anyone/everyone could be sick – or “drunk” – it is not necessary to establish that any particular person actually is. Just wear the “mask” – and take the jab. And pay for the alcohol-detector in your next new car, which won’t be installed for free.
It is necessary to (here it comes, again) keep everyone safe . . . at the cost of everyone’s expense and dignity, which was once upon a time presumptively respected by custom and by law until the individual did something to warrant no longer respecting it.
An ancient custom, rapidly receding in the rearview.
Interestingly, there is a strong connection between the “masking,” the jabbing – and now the Breathalyzing – of one and all.
In the first place, they all share a common antecedent precedent, which was the Supreme Court’s revocation, back in the ’80s, of the Fourth Amendment’s former protections against unreasonable searches.
The Court “interpreted” the meaning of the word to mean its opposite – thereby making it legal for armed agents of the state to forcibly stop motorists without any prior reason to suspect them of “drunk” driving and compel them to disprove the presumption of “drunkenness” before they were allowed to go on their way.
Refusal to stop became a crime – an inversion of the tradition (in custom and in law) that forcibly stopping people who’d committed no crime was itself criminal.
Refusal to prove one’s innocence as a condition of being allowed to proceed – as by performing various acts of Roadside Kabuki, such as balancing on one foot with eyes closed while counting to 12 backwards – constituted presumptive evidence of “drunk” driving – notwithstanding the absence of any proof of “drunk” driving beyond refusal to perform the demanded Kabuki.
In several states, refusing to cooperate in one’s own railroading was and is itself a punishable act, with consequences – such as automatic suspension of driving privileges as well as summary arrest – much the same as if one had actually been adjudicated “drunk.” A few states authorized forced blood draws if a person declines to provide evidence that can and will be used against him in a criminal proceeding. The mere threat of which is sufficient to suborn the roadside, probable-cause-free “cooperation” of most people.
And it’s all legal, notwithstanding the plain language of what was – once – the law of the land: The Bill of (ex) Rights. It offering about the same degree of protection as the warranty card that comes with your latest $20 kitchen counter appliance bought at Wal Mart.
This latest evolution of these pernicious precedents – as regards both sickness and “drunkenness” – ought not to surprise anyone capable of understanding what a precedent is and what follows from setting one. If people can be lawfully compelled to prove they aren’t “drunk” at a random checkpoint at which they are presumed to be “drunk” until they demonstrate they are not then (using the same logic) they can be presumed drunk until they demonstrate they are not every single time they get behind the wheel, their car becoming the checkpoint.
Just as they can be made to submit to a Jab – and to wear a “mask.” One size does fit all.
It is worse than the Red Queen’s sentence first, verdict afterward.
There is just sentence, first.
No verdict is necessary.
Everyone is just guilty – of whatever is asserted they’ve done or might do – and sentenced accordingly. It is an inversion of civilization, a regression to a state of pervasive suspicion in which no one is secure – having no recognized right to be let alone no matter what one does or doesn’t do.
The accusation is sufficient.
How long before they start burning witches again?
. . .
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Ultimately this comes from the prohibitionists. They are looking for back door prohibition.
So this will be a battle where on one side are the zealots and the control freaks and on the other side are the cronies, lawyers, cops, courts, and local governments for whom DUI is a racket that makes them a lot of money.
Baptists and bootleggers.
My state requires the blood draw when someone is “involved” in a serous accident whether they suspect impairment or not. They don’t define “serious” and they don’t define “involved.”
It reminds me of when I got called for jury duty and the lawyer asked if I’d ever been involved in a car accident. My answer was: “Who hasn’t?” Involved can mean anything from ‘I was drunk and rammed a school bus’ to ‘someone hit my car and took off in the walmart parking lot’ to ‘I was driving down the road and witnessed a wreck.’
Just this week, we had a wreck on the interstate. Traffic was stopped for another wreck and a women in a minivan decided to paste herself all over the back of a stationary semi. She didn’t make it. The semi driver, who wasn’t even moving when the wreck occurred, was ordered to submit his blood for analysis. So yes, he was “involved,” but there’s no way his potential impairment could have contributed to the wreck. They even ended the story with “police do not believe alcohol or drugs were a factor in the crash.” Shorthand for: the semi driver seemed fine and the minivan driver, while not fine, did not appear to be using upon cursory examination. Of course, lab results may tell a different story.
But yeah, get in a car accident and they just assume you’re a drunk or a druggie.
Although I think a significant number of wrecks are caused by phone usage, it’s not standard yet to turn over your phone for inspection. I did read a story awhile back of the cops trying to subpoena a girl’s phone after a wreck to prove she was messing with it. But I think in that case, a witness told them they thought she was on it before the fatal crash.
Since no one cares about freedom or privacy in this country anymore, I think there should be a “safety” sensor that automatically stops your vehicle if you pick up your stupid phone while you are driving. Cause an accident in the process? Oh well, maybe you should have left the damned phone down long enough to drive from point “A” to point “B”. Since the government is all concerned about our saaaaaffeeety and all….. (eye rolling). But maybe I should not give them any ideas….
Some impairments are acceptable others are not.
If an unacceptable impairment makes you less of a driver than you would be at the top of the game it’s a crime. Never mind you are still far above the minimum required of other people at the top of their game never mind where they are with acceptable impairments.
It’s all pick and choose based on feelings. This is bad and that’s okay.
This morning there was this idiot who cut me off to go slow. This person then proceeded to do it to two other people before entering a parking lot. That’s considered acceptable behavior to make other people hit the brakes because it was done slowly while sober. But driving much better than that with a non-zero BAC is bad.
Eric, the first thing I said when I saw the headlines for this was that you’ve been predicting it for at least ten years. So much for conspiracy theories.
Deaths in the “service” of the state are just fine. Your overlords are willing to accept those kinds of “losses”.
This is a mind blower. What if I’ve had a couple of beers and my bleeding child needs to be rushed to the hospital & my car won’t start? What if I’m leaving a bar and get pursued by a mugger, jump in my car and it won’t start? What if a forest fire is sweeping down on my neighborhood and I must flee asap and my car won’t start? They don’t care. This will cause more deaths.
Ah, a new generation of legis-ovines, blissfully unaware of the criminal mayhem enabled by the Gerry Ford-era seat-belt interlocks. Who cares about learning from history, after all? All that crap happened way back in 1619.
I shared the Autonews link above with a bunch of people I know, voicing my outrage (since I can’t share your article, Eric, since the feeble minded simply can’t be bothered to read something from a “crazy” site).
The response was expected, “why do you want to enable drunk driving?”. What the f..?! By opposing flaky interlocks in cars, I’m enabling drunk drivers? As in, the only thing keeping people from driving drunk is the presence of these systems?
People are so screwed up in the head nowadays that it’s not even funny. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen, and I come from communist Poland.
That’s scary, Poland is supposed to be quite based these days…
no, I mean I grew up there 🙂 It was pretty bad under communists with their brainwashing.
Today, it’s very different. Poland is in political turmoil, but for other reasons.
They want to push all the responsibility of life on to others. On to our dear leaders, the technocrats, corporate executives, and people like myself the engineers who make things work. They are permanent children and this is the result of the modified Prussian model public schools started by Horace Mann in the 1840s. It is deliberate. You can’t govern responsible adults but you can govern, micro-manage children. So the goal was to make people into children. Permanent adolescence.
Is it just me or is this the first day in ever that Lew Rockwell has no articles?
It must be me.
Also, did you hear that Mercola is going to delete his entire site?!
Hi Eure,
I also saw that Lew’s site is down; it is the first time that’s happened, to my knowledge. I know Lew and will see whether I can get any information regarding this…
Strangely coincidental with the Judge Nap firing from Fox for supposedly sexually harassing a dude…
Yep, Hatts. I remember those accusations began right before Orange Man was set to pick a new SCOTUS judge (eventually Barrett). They must be continuing the campaign in an attempt to destroy him completely.
By and large, our rights have left long ago. It has just been a slow creep of totalitarianism for quite a while.
But heck, we still have a national anthem that ends with land of the free – so must be true.
And since each side only defends the set of rights that they seek to enjoy, while crushing the rights of the other, they all are getting dwindled away.
Get used to it. Technology has allowed our masters to spy on us constantly and impose ever increasing controls on our actions. All will soon be indications of extremism, terrorism, or some other form of unsafe antisocialism.
Even wanting to be left alone will eventually be proof of your criminality.
Indeed, Dan. Wanting to be left alone was covered in the clip below starting at about 15 seconds in. Cuckoo’s Nest is what we’re living in; a total medicalized tyranny. And, as was revealed in this work, most of the inmates were there voluntarily. They could have walked out at any time but, preferred to remain in shackles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLVSohBg_yA
Anyone who knows me knows that I LIKE drinking. I think it’s FUN. I think it puts out the electrical fire in my mind caused by processing all of the idiocy and insanity of our times. I think it pleases the Lord Dionysus to get drunk and merry!
Now, I don’t drink and drive. At least, not anymore. In my youth I did. But the population density of the place in which I grew up was such that I never put anyone into any real danger. I never drove faster than I could see, and still don’t.
In fact, I’ve NEVER hurt ANYONE with my driving or my vehicles. That I should be judged guilty-until-proven innocent is, again, another reason to get shit-faced in order to stifle the feelings of rage and animosity generated thereby.
Unlike some vices, drinking has a fairly immediate and commensurate cost in the form of a hangover. This is actually a good thing. Booze is honest and toughens one’s resolve. You get what you deserve. The score is balanced.
But there’s nothing honest or commensurate about this “safety” despotism. No matter how well you behave or drive or take care to avoid danger or damage, you are treated just the same: As though you are the least capable, because, of course, we are making the world “safe” for the least capable. Another stupid idea.
Fuck these people.
Your not alone BaD. Alcohol sales went up FIVE HUNDRED PERCENT last year in the US. Not what one would call a healthy society. And it was caused by the Sociopaths In Charge, not COVID.
The implication is that you’re lying. It’s always that you’re lying. The correct response is “takes one to know one.”
I remember doing a job up in Martha’s Vineyard back in the 1990s. We had some free time and drove around the island looking for the Mary Jo Kopechne memorial bridge. Apparently it had been demolished…
After Prohibition ended, the number of accidents due to drunk driving steadily increased each year afterwards.
The governor of South Dakota was driving drunk, ran a stop sign, struck and killed a motorcyclist. Can happen to anybody.
Pentagon on lockdown, shots fired, dead bodies.
Tesla fire in San Diego.
Elon must be drunk by now.
Pilots fly drunk.
Berkshire Hathaway is 417,000 USD per share. Up some 50 times since ca. 1985.
“We drink because we’re alcoholics, that’s what we do.” – Grace Slick
That’s not infrastructure. That’s just being a pain in the ass.
It’s also a giant cop out, because they are pushing it off onto some department, instead of defining the standards (and having to defend them) themselves.
I’m tired of this crap. So’s everyone else. So, why is there no end to it?
Because “everyone else“ does not say No. It will not stop, and it will continue to get more absurd and intrusive, until it’s stopped. The sheepish way all of this is casually acquiesced (not agreed to, just accepted with another “oh well” or “whoa is me” like Eeyore) is the problem. From TSA crotch grabbing, to face diapers, to forced vaccinations under duress, to BAC (haha) blowers in our cars. What imposition will be the one that is too far?
‘That’s not infrastructure.’ — Publius
You don’t say! Grayhairs will recall a lost era in the 1960s, when Senatorial gladiators had dramatic stentorian scraps over germaneness. It’s a great concept:
‘Today, the principle of germaneness is well established. Forty state constitutions contain a provision that requires a bill to address or contain a single subject.’ — National Conference of State Legislatures
But as with so many sound legal principles, germaneness is a dead letter in Washington DC. Nancy Pelosi captured the Clowngressional zeitgeist: ‘We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.‘
BOHICA, baby, cuz it’s happening again right here, right now: AP reports that the bipartisan $1 billion infrastructure bill contains 2,700 pages. That means — besides no Senator actually having read it (one’s lips get so very tired) — it’s larded with pork; with buildings named for random boozers, bandits and billionaires; and salted with non-germane easter-egg surprises like ignition interlocks.
Remember ol’ Wilbur Mills — chair of House Ways and Means Committee — taking a 2 a.m. skinny dip in the Tidal Basin with the Argentine firecracker Fanne Fox? Mandatory ignition interlocks might saved the sloshed solon’s career. /sarc
Frankly, the legislative sausage factory has veered out of control, with weiners spilling out onto the floor and Kongress Klowns getting sucked into the racing conveyor belts. It’s Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times merged with Koyaanisqatsi. And it probably can’t be fixed until catastrophic failure burns it down for a total rethink. Jan 6th was just a teaser preview, the trailer.
Not to mention the last line of practically any subject in a bill: “(insert name of appropriate bureaucracy) has authority to write any regulation needed to enforce this subject of this bill”.
What about requiring a breathalyzer test before congressmen or senators are allowed to vote on anything?
Or a lie detector.
Lie detector is useless on someone who thinks they’re telling the truth.
Or a psychotic, who wouldn’t know truth if it bit him…
Or her.
If it weren’t for lying drunks, there wouldn’t be much left in DC.
A poetic and illustrative analysis of the horror storm as always, Jim. 🙂
I’ll have to check out “Koyaanisqatsi”.
Yup, can’t be fixed is gonna break down. And the dummies breaking it keep trying to break it more! We could have glided along with what we had/have in this country, far from utopia but plenty good enough.
But no, these super-intelligent people have decided the only course of action is to make everything worse. And somehow they always get their way, actually legal or not. They get away with murder. Still are getting away with it.
It’s just a question of time.
So when is the mandated 25mph governor? For our saaaaftey of course.
Not to forget Asset Forfeiture in the blatant violations of the Bill of Rights.
Pursued to conclusion, such guilty until proven innocent methods end up with nutrition police, exercise police, bathing police, dressing police, tooth brushing police, on and on ad infinitum. For the good of the “community”, don’t you know. Which “we decide” not you.
South Park’s episode on TSA…
And getting worse.
Maybe when pulled over for that taillight violation have at the ready the mask and face shield with tinting just like that jackass general was wearing the other day. Hand them your licence and don’t say a word and just stare back at them. Hand them a sign that says you can’t leave the vehicle due to covid. Video the encounter, so when the police say I smelled alchohol on his breath and his eyes were bloodshot you can argue in court I was complying with public health orders and there is no probable cause to detain.
Use there own ruling BS against them.
I’ve seen an AGW on the roadside gesturing for a motorist to un-diaper.
I don’t know what else was going on, and didn’t stick around (opposite side of the road near the parking lot at work).
Don’t count on that one flying.
I don’t drink alcohol and have no intentions of ever drinking alcohol. And yet I’m to prove I’m not drunk to a freaking mechanized nanny every time I get behind the wheel. Makes perfect sense to Nazis, Stasis, Bolsheviks, and woke limp dicks.
Indeed, Mike – amen
I’m also not sick – but I am expected to pretend I am and take medicine because I might get sick.
I’ve been ranting for years it would come to this and so it has.
‘It is to be imposed on the same principle that “masks” are imposed upon people who aren’t sick.’ — EP
Well, some people. Little people, mostly. No-accounts. Not Senators and such.
Indeed, Senators are shocked – shocked — that South Carolina’s fully-vaxxed Senator Linda … errr, Lindsey … Graham has come down with the dread covid.
While some flippantly jest that Graham’s infection proves there’s a God, others realize that coronavirus has bigger fish to fry among the poltroons and poseurs of our rancid political-media axis.
One refers, of course, to the star-studded 60th birthday of America’s greatest-ever political charlatan, the sanctimonious Barack Obama — born on August 4, 1961 in, uh, Hawaii.
Yeah, Hawaii, according to the steamed, cleaned and gyreened multilayered image file of his chimerical ‘birth certificate.’
Given the grifter bent which the two-lawyer Martha’s Vineyard couple share with that other two-lawyer couple, the Clintons, one would not be surprised if the Obamas auction off the BBC (Barky’s Birth Certificate) as a non-fungible token (NFT) between the entree and dessert. Cash buyers only, please.
Barky’s bash will be held outside the palatial 7,000 square foot pile purchased by the ex-president and his burly spouse ‘Mike’ in 2019 with $12 million of dirty, dirty money laundered into their grubby mitts by the book publishing mafia.
The event is expected to include 475 invited guests, served by at least 200 mostly caucasian flunkeys at the 30-acre waterfront plantation. Fetch me another piña colada, boy. And I could use a shoeshine.
Pearl Jam will perform, while The Hill reports that Oprah Winfrey, George Clooney and Stephen ‘Superspreader’ Spielberg are slated to attend. Regrettably, Ghislaine Maxwell is detained (so to speak) by another pressing matter.
What can a friend say other than ‘Delta variant, bitches!‘ And make sure the food taster precedes you.
Can’t help but envision a large nuclear bomb landing in the vicinity. It will be (is) a target-rich environment.
A terrifying Night of the Living Democrats — headed by moldy old corpses like Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, leading tattered throngs of Amistad captives still trailing their clanking chains — would be more poetic.
Especially on an island where the only escape is to leap into the sea.
The scene was rockin’, all were digging the sounds
Igor on chains, backed by his baying hounds
The coffin-bangers were about to arrive
With their vocal group, ‘The Crypt-Kicker Five’
They played the monster mash
(The monster mash) It was a graveyard smash
— Bobby Pickett, Monster Mash
Keep testing everyone for COVID and eventually everyone will be a COVID case. In regard to Lindsey’s, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if someone just happened to mess up the test. It would be so simple, just use a contaminated swab, or run pay off the lab tech to run the PCR test a few dozen times too many. Hell, maybe the tech saw the name on the vial, it’s not like they’re blind tests after all and how many Lindsey Grahams are there in the DC metro area, and decided to make it positive… just for the LULZ. Or worse, figured that in the fog of war anything is fair game.
So he got COVID, in spite of taking his saline injection?
Depends on the test. The PCR “test” has pretty much been discredited yet it is still used. The procedure was changed this spring because it was producing way too many false positives. It would be trivial to run the test using the old method, just find some social justice type in the lab to run it until something shows up.
And from what I understand, the PCR test is looking for the virus, not antibodies. There are coronaviruses everywhere all the time. The atmosphere isn’t a pristine sterile thing, but we evolved in this hostile environment, which is why many times when travel you get sick. Just because the virus is in your nostril doesn’t mean you meet the medical definition of infection. But it does meet the political definition so therefore he tests positive. Gets him out of the office for two weeks, so no arm twisting, no deal making, no 3 martini lunches. Probably will be very effective at getting the Democrat’s agenda moving forward without speed bumps.
Much as the old adage goes “The beatings will continue until morale improves”, I am afraid the only way to stop it is the precise cranio-application of a copper/lead amalgamation to the mulcting brigands en masse, this, after the first few dances, will eventually result in a general consensus of “I’m not stopping anybody anymore, you see what happened last night at the “probable cause-free sobriety check point.” Claire Wolfe was wrong. While it WAS “too late to work within the system”, it WASN’T “too early to shoot the bastards.” Especially the ones who don’t understand the concept of Liberty.
I agree, Josey –
It is getting to just that; to just what your nome de plume was forced into. Josey was just trying to work his farm and raise his family and bothering no one. But the Red Legs came – and laid waste his farm and life. What is a man to do in such circumstances?
I will place bets that it’s coming soon. We will start hearing of shootings, blamed on the “far right extremists”. But really, it will be normal people at their mental breaking point with nothing left to lose.
Like Josey, I too am just trying to work this farm and raise a family. But unlike Josey, I know what’s coming and will not be caught off guard. I’m always on the lookout for those Red Legs. Hell, I may not even wait for them to come to me.
“There’s ANOTHER ‘old saying’, Senator…’ don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining !’ ”
Here’s to you, John Vernon (Dean Worker of ” Animal House “), wherever you are…
Hope I can keep my old vehicles running. I don’t drink, but this ridiculous.
The line in the sand of any that have one is fast being approached, if not already crossed, with no sign of reducing velocity. Tyranny grows until it dies. By natural cause or “other”. Paraphrasing Frederick Douglass, “What tyranny you will accept is exactly how much you will get”.