-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tuesday 12 March 2002 05:45 pm, Victoria Heller wrote: > property, your ideas, your identity - all of these things are your > property and are protected by the 5th Amendment of our Constitution.
Ms. Heller, I'm not sure which Constitution you're reading but the one I've been reading all these years does not state in the Fifth Amendment that ideas are private property. In fact, article I, section 8, clearly states that "Congress shall have the power to ... 8. To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries:" Without this "exclusive right" ideas would have no protection at all, as they do not when that "limited time" expires. > Property rights secure almost every other freedom we enjoy. I doubt it. Not when due process or just compensation are all that are needed to deprive one of them. I'd say our freedoms are founded in the rule of law, justly applied. Or maybe we've just been lucky for a while. What the Fifth does seem to preclude are things like asset forfeiture laws, where the police take, keep, and sell your stuff without your ever having had due process of law or just compensation. What the ACLU calls "a license to steal" (http://www.aclu.org/forfeiture/index.html). Do the Minneapolis police engage in this unsavory practice? I know nationally it is some problem, has it come here as well? Desperately attempting to steer this into Minneapolis-specific territory both out of concern for the list and because I'm curious if the Minneapolis police force is currently incented to raid citizens' homes to fill City Hall coffers. I'm not sure how to ascertain this myself, anyone know? - Michael Libby, Cleveland/North Minneapolis ______Michael_C_Libby__{_x_(at)_ichimunki_(dot)_com_}______ | "even monkeys fall from trees" : "saru mo ki kara ochiru" | | private hotmail/yahoo email is deleted unread due to spam | |____ public key at http://www.ichimunki.com/public.key ____| -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8jsgI4ClW9KMwqnMRAnv3AJ46ccOrRS9FsZD6ZooZIRcq307rygCfZ3EP hqgkZfU36G/Yojlt/KAoHjs= =Ece7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
