It's called the camel's nose in the tent. Or frog-warming.

Wow. I did not know. I wonder how many tax payers are unaware that their tax dollars are used, not to secure the border, but to harass people 100 miles away from the border. I now live close enough that I will likely experience going through these checkpoints somewhere in the near future. Good to know that I can decline to tell them anything.

Precedent is used by lawyers and judges as a guideline for rulings with similar findings of fact. Without it, every trial would reinvent the wheel of law and you would very effectively eliminate anything resembling a "speedy trial". And if you believe that a judge is ignoring precedent or "legislating from the bench", you can appeal the decision.

A common misperception is that legal appeals have to do with the facts of the case. This is not true. Appeals are almost always about procedure or the application of precedent. In very rare cases, the appeal may be on the basis of performance of either the attorney or the judge.

As for the rest, you are certainly entitled to your opinion on the matter. I'm not going to disagree with you that certain aspects of our law have become corrupted and would benefit from a return to basic, Constitutional principles.

I am not aware of any precedent supporting your claim. From a purely logical standpoint, that line of reasoning would also dictate that other rights would similarly be granted to non-Citizens of the US. By extension, every other person on the planet would be granted US Citizenship rights merely by being in the Country. If that is the case, there would be no need for passports, green cards, etc. and there would be no controversy on immigration.

Another way to look at the issue is to tie rights to responsibilities. If they are granted rights, do they not only have the responsibilities as well? Would they not also be subject to the same penalties for criminal actions? The fact is that they are not. Because they are not US Citizens, we may not put them to death for murdering our citizens or engaging in espionage. If they appear in court, they are not legally represented by a court-appointed attorney, but by their consulate. We can't even do anything more than deport them. The problem is that because they are not citizens, there is no jurisdiction over them. No responsibilities also means no rights. Non-Citizens are guests in our Country, but this should not be confused with having the same legal rights.

"Remember, until you prove that you are a US cirizen, you are NOT protected by the Fifth Amendment" [of the Constitution?]
Heavens help an election official if he demands a proof of citizemship from an illegal imigrant.
It is OK for TSA to strip search an 80 year old woman or a 7 year old girl, but Heavens help if they require a cloth-wrapped figure with a vail over its face to uncover the face even without demanding nudity.
I wonder how long would things like aircraft engines, turbine-generators and nuclear reactors work if analogous contradictions (remember a lady by the name of Ayn Rand?) were built into them.
For a long time I thought of enginering as the "art of things that work" (I did not come up with the term, I learned it from someone else abot four decades ago). Makes me want to ask what kind of art is jurisprudence? Words like dissimulation, obfuscation, self-serving come first to my mind. And the damage to antire nation is much greater than from a plane crash, extended loss of power or mishandling of Three Mile Iland. Can someone of you enlighten me?

Zen,
yes.

Close! I just finished reading an article that quoted a poll that had 26% of Americans and 44% of Republicans believing that an armed revolution was necessary, only 36% disagreed.

Scary, scary times.

I LOVE that "stakeholder" has it's own category at the top. and the very first line CHILLING
"VIPR operations promote confidence in and protect our nation’s transportation systems through targeted deployment of integrated TSA assets"
we're fuchin doomed

See below. These checks include traffic stops on highways.

http://www.tsa.gov/about-tsa/visible-int...

I have no doubt that, with sufficient random stops, law enforcement will, sooner or later find SOMETHING. Remember that every American is subject at any one time to tens of thousands of laws....how can you know you are in compliance with them all?

It would be interesting to see how many "illegals" and "criminals" are caught at such checkpoints versus the cost of operating them and the number of hours taken away from those who are stopped.

These are ongoing over the last couple of years.
I'lll see if I can trace some of them down.

no-

And 100 miles from any coast.

They may find a few, but in the SCOTUS case last year about the dogs, the government claimed that drug dogs could tell the difference between citizens and illegals. They're already much more than just check points.

Check Youtube, there are dozens of these types of stops. Even some of the most atrocious including breaking windows, dragging the driver our, beating them.

20 years ago you could walk across or drive with a DL. Today it's a passport and your presence is assumed to be suspicious.

Have you read about the VIPER teams showing up in Kentucky (or Tennessee), roving patrols on the highway, more than 100 miles inland?

You're in error about the 5th Amendment. Citizenship is not required, if you are in the US, the 5th applies.

Ahh, but we do have ID's now. See the link:
http://axiomamuse.wordpress.com/2014/01/...

Your first sentence is interesting and right on. You don't find the word reasonable in the 4th Amendment, but SCOTUS decided a few years ago that since the word unreasonable was in the 4th, that the founders must have also meant that reasonable searches were OK. When we allowed lawyers to be our Supreme Court judges, we opened ourselves up to this kind of nonsense.

there is another one between San Antonio, TX and McAllen / Brownsville, TX area that I've been stopped at before. that one is also around 100 miles north of the Mexico/US border.

100 miles into the US. This means several major interstates and state highways as well as county roads as well as in US towns.

Forced seizure of assets.