Jack Kemp

http://theresurgent.com/shame-on-jeff-sessions/
Shame on Jeff Sessions
By Erick Erickson | July 20, 2017, 05:00am | @ewerickson

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has long prided himself on asking if things are constitutional before proceeding, but the constitutionality of his desires has run crashing into his law and order views. He has decided to expand a positively unconstitutional policy that should be ruthlessly fought in courts and legislatures around the country. Jeff Sessions wants to seize the property of Americans accused of crimes even if they are never found guilty by a jury.
Civil asset forfeiture has long been the government’s preferred means to confiscate property from suspected drug dealers and others. The problem, however, is that often the person is found not innocent by a jury and the assets are unrecoverable. According to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, the Drug Enforcement Agency alone has seized more than $3 billion from people not charged with a crime.

In one case in 2016, Oklahoma police seized $53,000 owned by a Christian band, an orphanage and a church after stopping a man on a highway for a broken taillight. A few years earlier, a Michigan drug task force raided the home of a self-described "soccer mom,” suspecting she was not in compliance with the state’s medical marijuana law. They proceeded to take "every belonging” from the family, including tools, a bicycle and her daughter’s birthday money.

What is appalling here is that many states are enacting prohibitions on civil asset forfeiture, but the Attorney General wants to allow state and local law enforcement to use federal asset forfeiture laws to continue seizing property. Local law enforcement will thereby be able to get around their own states’ laws, so long as they share the spoils of their ill gotten gains with the federal government. This turns the concept of federalism on its head.

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