For those who think libertarians are nothing more than, as one wag put it, conservatives who like porn, this exchange demonstrates otherwise. Situations like the Hudson v Michigan court ruling last week put libertarians and conservatives squarely at odds with one another, which is why the National Review is busy defending the decision while the Cato Institute is hammering it. Andrew McCarthy - no, not the one from St. Elmo's Fire - is a former prosecutor defending the ruling and Radley Balko is responding to him. And I think you'll agree that Balko is pretty much dominating this debate. I particularly like this response to McCarthy's claim that it should be up to legislators to determine the remedy for violating the knock and announce rule, not courts (I'll paste it below the fold):
That's not the way the Bill of Rights works. In Wilson, a unanimous Court (that would include Scalia) determined that the knock-and-announce rule is ingrained in the Fourth Amendment. That is, it is part of the Bill of Rights. Which means it isn't subject to a popular vote or to the whim of state legislatures, short of a constitutional amendment. Therefore, it most certainly is up to the Supreme Court to provide a sanction severe enough to make sure the rule is observed. I'm sure there are lots of state legislatures (and if I had to guess, McCarthy) who'd love to vote away the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments entirely. Fortunately, we don't subject our natural rights to a popular vote.Moreover, Scalia's opinion didn't say that states "may" enact appropriate remedies, he asserted that exsiting remedies, such as civil suits and internal discipline are sufficient to prevent illegal no-knock raids. As the state of Michigan and the U.S. Solicitor General both acknowledged in their briefs, sanction in either case is almost unheard of for an illegal no-knock entry. Which means that Scalia, McCarthy, the Court's majority in Hudson, and all of its supporters are taking the position that we now have not just a law, but a recognized constitutional right on the books that isn't now and probably will never be enforced.
Isn't "rule of law" supposed to be a conservative principle? Aren't conservatives always complaining about having laws on the books that never get enforced? Or does that one get thrown out when we're applying the law to cops, instead of to civilians?
Game, set, match.
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Clearly, libertarians don't want the police strolling in and catching them with that porn.
Rich people have the means to sue. Poor people, usually, do not. Threat of a lawsuit won't deter cops from violating the rights of poor people.
This bit was my favorite part (and a good idea):
. . . recommendations to rein in the damage caused by SWAT overkill and the militarization of police, such as videotaping all SWAT raids, imposing strict liability on the cops who conduct them (as well as the government agency they're working for), using them only for cases in which someone presents a direct and immediate threat to the community, and opening the entire warrant process up for public scrutiny -- including the prosecutors and judges who sign off on them.
I've heard that libertarians tend to be paleoconservative (as opposed to neoconservative), while supporting civil liberties and small government.
Only in the sense of foreign policy, where paleoconservatives tend to be more isolationist and neo-conservatives tend to favor a more active and aggressive foreign policy. Libertarians tend to be more isolationist, but that's not universally true. For example, most libertarians are probably opposed to the war in Iraq, while some, like Sandefur, are in favor of it.
While a few libertarians are isolationist, opposing the war in Iraq is not an isolationist stand, it's a stand against an immoral invasion of a sovereign nation.
Most libertarians are quite happy to do business with the world, without the interference of the WTO. Most libertarians are also happy to visit other countries and spread the philosophy of freedom, without imposing democracy at gunpoint.