{"id":1338,"date":"2004-12-10T12:50:42","date_gmt":"2004-12-10T19:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/?p=1338"},"modified":"2004-12-10T12:50:42","modified_gmt":"2004-12-10T19:50:42","slug":"a-taste-of-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/2004\/12\/10\/a-taste-of-the-system\/","title":{"rendered":"A Taste of the System ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/barlow.typepad.com\/barlowfriendz\/2004\/12\/a_taste_of_the_.html\">A Taste of the System<\/a>. Since the election, as you&#8217;ve doubtless noticed, I haven&#8217;t had much to say here. Having lost that crusade &#8211; and I do think we lost, election skullduggery notwithstanding &#8211; I have been quietly gathering myself up for the countless smaller contests arrayed before us that, taken collectively, will determine the future of freedom in America. We can&#8217;t afford to lose many of those, and we will have to emulate our authoritarian adversaries&#8217; disciplined resolve if we are are to prevail. As it happens, I am already personally engaged in one of these battles, and it has been testing my resolve for over a year. Now that it seems to be coming to a head, I want to tell you about it. My own liberty is at stake, but so, I think, is the liberty of anyone who wishes to travel in America without fear of humiliation or arrest. On September 15, 2003, shortly after Burning Man, I was hauled off an airplane that was about to depart San Francisco for New York and charged with the misdemeanor possession of controlled substances that had allegedly been discovered during a search of my checked baggage. I&#8217;m not sure why it&#8217;s taken me so long to relate this event. Embarrassment certainly played no part. Generally, I like to be fully disclosed, no matter how far I may wander beyond the normative fringe. I suppose that, for legal reasons, I wanted to avoid any apparent admission of guilt, and only now do I realize that it&#8217;s possible to tell this tale without making one. This is because, in most cases &#8211; and this is almost certainly one of them &#8211; contraband that is illegally discovered does not legally exist. If that seems a technicality to you, you may want to re-read the 4th Amendment, as well as the subsequent case law (notably Mapp v. Ohio) which sets forth the &#8220;exclusionary rule.&#8221; However shredded by the War on Some Drugs, the 4th Amendment remains part of the Constitution. In order to see that it goes on meaning something, I decided to fight this charge and have spent the last 14 months doing so. Now I will tell you my story&#8230;. [<a href=\"http:\/\/barlow.typepad.com\/barlowfriendz\/\">BarlowFriendz<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Another story about a disgusting encounter with the Gestapo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Taste of the System. Since the election, as you&#8217;ve doubtless noticed, I haven&#8217;t had much to say here. Having lost that crusade &#8211; and I do think we lost, election skullduggery notwithstanding &#8211; I have been quietly gathering myself up for the countless smaller contests arrayed before us that, taken collectively, will determine the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-from-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orange-road.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}