Gary Johnson: Challenging "Stop and Frisk"

These days you cannot actually find a presidential candidate willing to defend American civil liberties, at least not in the two major parties.

Possibly that's why the ACLU lists Libertarian Gary Johnson (two-time governor of New Mexico) as the best presidential candidate for protecting civil liberties.

Here's Johnson on Mayor Bloomberg's Arizona/TSA-like "Stop and Frisk" policy in New York City:

In a statement released in New York, the two-term New Mexico governor said, “Last year, almost 700,000 people on the streets of the city were stopped and subjected to TSA-style invasions of their privacy and fundamental civil liberty. 87% of those people were black or Latino. But these folks weren’t trying to get on airplanes; they were walking down the street.

“The America we need to reclaim is a place where you can leave your home and not fear being stopped by the police and patted down because of the way you look." Said Johnson, “I think this stop-and-frisk policy violates the Constitutional protection against ‘unreasonable search.”

“Two years ago, Mayor Bloomberg was one of the most aggressive critics in the country of Arizona’s immigration law – a law many, myself included, considered ill-advised and likely to result in profiling. At the time, he said that law was “bad for the country” and rhetorically asked, “Who wants to visit the Grand Canyon if you could end up getting hassled by the police?”.

“He was right about the Arizona law. And if profiling is a problem for Arizona, what about a policy that appears to be resulting in precisely the same thing on the streets of New York?," said Johnson, whose campaign for President will likely qualify for federal campaign matching funds this week.

As I begin to look more closely at Johnson, first examination suggests something really strange: he's sane.

Comments

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point: Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo: Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1. Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...

Search This Blog