{"id":39514,"date":"2017-07-25T05:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T09:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39514"},"modified":"2017-07-24T22:56:55","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T02:56:55","slug":"legal-fiction-sounds-better-than-lie-but-in-this-case-the-two-terms-are-near-synonyms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/07\/25\/legal-fiction-sounds-better-than-lie-but-in-this-case-the-two-terms-are-near-synonyms\/","title":{"rendered":"“‘Legal fiction’ sounds better than ‘lie’, but in this case the two terms are near synonyms”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Instapundit Glenn Reynolds<\/a> in USA Today<\/em> on US Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ passion for civil asset forfeiture:<\/p>\n

Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to steal from you.<\/p>\n

Oh, he doesn\u2019t call it that. He calls it \u201ccivil forfeiture.\u201d But what it is, is theft by law enforcement. Sessions should be ashamed. If I were president, he\u2019d be fired.<\/p>\n

Under \u201ccivil forfeiture,\u201d law enforcement can take property from people under the legal fiction that the property itself is guilty of a crime. (\u201cLegal fiction\u201d sounds better than \u201clie,\u201d but in this case the two terms are near synonyms.) It was originally sold as a tool for going after the assets of drug kingpins, but nowadays it seems to be used against a lot of ordinary Americans who just have things that law enforcement wants. It\u2019s also a way for law enforcement agencies to maintain off-budget slush funds, thus escaping scrutiny.<\/p>\n

As Drug Enforcement Agency agent Sean Waite told the Albuquerque Journal<\/em>, \u201cWe don\u2019t have to prove that the person is guilty. \u2026 It\u2019s that the money is presumed to be guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPresumed to be guilty.\u201d Once in America, we had a presumption of innocence. But that was inconvenient to the powers that be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Tamara Keel<\/a> said “Appointing Sessions was the opposite of ‘draining the swamp’; it was basically pumping in a whole bunch of vintage swamp water”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Instapundit Glenn Reynolds in USA Today on US Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ passion for civil asset forfeiture: Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to steal from you. Oh, he doesn\u2019t call it that. He calls it \u201ccivil forfeiture.\u201d But what it is, is theft by law enforcement. Sessions should be ashamed. If I were president, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,9,10,13],"tags":[996,715,343,1037,217],"class_list":["post-39514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-law","category-liberty","category-usa","tag-civilforfeiture","tag-constitution","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-donaldtrump","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ahk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39514"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39517,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39514\/revisions\/39517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}