John Stossel covered the topic of forfeiture laws in one of his shows. See his syndicated column titled, "Confiscating Your Property" on May 19, 2010 at - http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2010/05/19/confiscating_your_...

Right on! An excellent book covering the topic of forfeiture laws is, "The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice," by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton. It scared me so bad, I had to smoke a blunt.

Unfortunately, per Gonzales vs. Raich (2005), I am not allowed to do this legally in California. Apparently, the Commerce Clause applies to medicinal marijuana use, regardless of state law. If you want an example of how modern "liberals" and conservatives have co-conspired - via judicial activism - to steal our liberty, consider that the precedent for Raich was Wickard vs. Filburn (1942).

In other words, a blantant disregard for economic liberty (Wickard) has resulted in federal agents denying me the freedom to inhale chronic into my own body, in my own home no less! At least the federal government had the honesty to pass a Constitutional amendment to ban alcohol consumption in 1919 (18th Amendment); later repealed, of course, in 1933 (21st Amendment).

How does one repeal a Supreme Court decision, no matter how contrary it might be to the original meaning and intent of the Founding Fathers? The Constitution is dead-letter, and anyone who advocates the "Living Constitution" doctrine should be tarred and feathered.

Ah damn! I take that back..., that would probably run afoul of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause in the 8th Amendment.

Nov. 2nd can't come soon enough!! Vote libertarian!!!

Only if you're a complete moron.

Redundancy can't hurt.

I thought Snuggly was just a plush version of Mr. Zuckerberg.

Not to mention that the US has no jurisdiction for this kind of outside its own territory, and the very idea of global media and the internet completely shoots the idea in the foot right from the word go.

PLEASE tell us you're joking. If not, then it would be entertaining to hear your definition of what "bad" is. That has been a raging debate ever since language developed to the point where debate was possible. You'd be going up against Socrates, Aquinas, etc., etc., etc., so good luck with THAT.

Among other things, this kind of data mining allows interested parties to manipulate Fred far more easily than "traditional" methods.

Suppose Mr. 3rd Party wants to put an oil pipeline through Fred's backyard.

He checks if the voters in Fred's community are statistically likely to catch a "right to pipeline" rider on state legislation. If not, great.

If they do catch it, what is Fred's hot button issue? What token can Mr. Party throw into his election platform next year that will force Fred to vote for him despite that "right to pipeline" is attached?

Maybe Fred wants green funding. If so, Party throws in some green funding talk into the election spiel.

If Fred doesn't want anything, how can Party work around him? If Fred is a "lost cause" voter, why not take the liberty to tack on other legislation that Fred doesn't like but Mr. Party does? Use mined data to determine token concessions to offer other voters and find the path of least resistance around Fred?

Worst case, maybe Fred gets fed up. (Fred's prior history of activism gives Mr. Party a reasonable idea of how likely this is to happen.) Maybe Fred starts a community campaign against "right to pipeline".

No worries for Mr. Party. If Fred has done anything unseemly (or even has the appearance of being so) at any time since surveillance was started, Mr. Right can leak it to the press and use it to crucify him. Pornography; messy divorce; friends in low places; angry rant that could be construed as antisemitic; you name it. Why go through the messy process of community activism or civil litigation when the whole issue can be buried in scandal?

In general, Mr. Party now has the means to determine the easiest, cheapest, most effective way of manipulating, working around, or getting rid of Fred.

If you don't believe that the present-generation data mining systems have the ability to do this (if given sufficient data to work with), please invite yourself into the 21st century.

And try not to do anything to upset Mr. Party.

You'll regret it.

Idiot.

Who gets to define "bad?"