Ferguson Curfew and the Constitution

By Douglas V. Gibbs

As the stories continue to pour out of Ferguson, Missouri, one reader asks, “I’m disappointed you’re not addressing whether the curfew is Constitutional.”

When I responded she has to remember the difference between local and federal authorities, she responded, “I haven’t. Bill of Rights a floor, not a ceiling. Mo constitution cannot take away natural 1st Amend right.”

The headlines are all over the violence, and the curfew, but one thing is true, nobody is talking about rights, and government authorities, so let’s take a look.

Based on Kris’s argument, the curfew is a violation of the citizens’ right of free speech as provided in the Bill of Rights.  And, since that is a natural right, a God-given right, it cannot be limited in any way, shape, or form.

I believe that the Bill of Rights only applies to the Federal Government, as the founders originally intended, but the same rights of free speech and to peaceably assemble are also listed in the Missouri State Constitution.

The people are not peaceably assembling, so law enforcement has every right to attempt to return the chaos to peace.

Article I, Section 8 tasks the Congress with calling forth the militia to suppress insurrections.  Shays’ Rebellion was the lesson, however, that it takes more than a militia, sometimes.

Article 4, Section 4 tasks the United States Government with protecting the States against domestic violence.

But at what point do we recognize that the government is making a play for a police state?

As for the curfew, that tends to be the tool of tyrants.  Curfew is a way for the government to control the people.  Is it authorized?  Is it a tool that should be used when there is domestic violence, and assembly that is anything but peaceful?

The reality is that what has been going on is not just some legal case, or some isolated case of violence where up and down rules of authorities and confrontations are all that matters.  The riots in Ferguson are not a mere case of political speech, or civil unrest.  The unrest is the result of generations of conditioning, generations of dependency on government, generations of the left’s schemes of racial division, and generations of Black Nationalism as we see pushed by people like Farrakahn, and Jeremiah Wright.  This is what killed Detroit, and now it is the illness that is spreading through America.

The scary part about it is that the liberal left Democrats are trying to do what they can to keep it going, to increase the division, and fan the flames of the anger.  That’s why Holder called for another autopsy, and that’s why they were quick to release the evidence to the public that Michael Brown was shot six times.  They don’t care about justice, and they don’t care about the people.  It was a political move to create chaos and crisis.  They did it to keep the riots going.  Crisis is what they want, because, as Rahm Emanuel put it, they need crisis to do the things they could not normally do.

Does this mean we are moving even more rapidly toward a police state?  Is martial law on the menu?

A government that imposes curfew is definitely one willing to head in that direction.

– Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

Militant protesters in Ferguson growing in number, many coming from out-of-state…

‘BLACK POWER’…

BUCHANAN: 1960s-like Riots Could Cause Voter Rebuke For Obama…

KURTZ: Some Liberal Outlets Creating ‘Almost Lynch Mob Mentality’…

Trayvon Martin’s Mom: ‘We Will Make Them Feel Us’…

More Arrested as Police Use Tear Gas

Witness Conversation a Game Changer in Ferguson?

New Autopsy

Shot Six Times

National Guard Called In

Obama’s Racist Remarks

Autopsy Disproves Eyewitness Accounts that Brown Was Shot in the Back

Source: http://politicalpistachio.blogspot.com/2014/08/ferguson-curfew-and-constitution.html