American Values #2: Civil Rights

The issue of deteriorating civil rights of the Empire's citizens (with, for the most part, their willing acquiescence) is not a new one, and may in part be explained as a somewhat inevitable consequence of increasing population. (Let us recall a "Bartlettism": more people=less freedom). Just last week, however, a further "breakthough" in the downward spiral appeared, in the form of the newly constituted Supreme Court's decision to throw out a 50 year precedent of excluding evidence obtained by police in violation of Constitutional rights (known, appropriately enough, as the "exclusionary rule"). It is considered by legal scholars that the sanction of exclusion of evidence serves as a, and perhaps the only, legal deterrent to police misconduct (Scalia's feeble attempt to portray police disciplinary action and civil rights lawsuits as viable remedies only points out how far from reality this opinion strays). At any rate, a significant step in the devolution of freedom, and aside from a few stories and even fewer protests, this decision has since sunk below the surface of the national "pool" of conversation. Chaos can only conclude that the citizens of the Empire have reached the point of no return in somnolence. Civil rights are gradually going extinct, as surely as the buffalo.