I'd be interested in that as well. Search warrants in general have to list exactly what's being searched and what's being sought. You don't get a search warrant for the house and then rip it apart. You generally get to search whatever's visible and accessible. If you want to go farther - for example, you think a cache…

I think you're overrating the preparedness of criminals. Sure, you have your diabolical criminals, but then you have people like that idiot piece of human garbage in Charlottesville who decided it would be a good idea to ram people with his car in an area with a million cell phones and security cameras and witnesses,…

Although refusing to take a breathalyzer is a law unto itself - in other words, it's not illegal to refuse a breathalyzer because in general refusing to provide evidence is a crime. It's illegal because there's a specific law that says "if you refuse a breathalyzer, that is a crime".

Not a lawyer, but I read court opinions and such. I'd assume it would fall into the same territory as similar behavior like being seen running away from a crime scene or being seen disposing of evidence that's never been recovered. They can testify to what they saw. It shouldn't be enough to convict you, but it's a…

Nope. It's just a topic I'm very interested in. I'm really talking to whoever's reading the comments and not you. I've got no quarrel with you. :)

That's a fairly ridiculous course of action. The police can't unlock your phone without a warrant, so if you smash it as soon as a police officer approaches you, that really only makes sense if there's enough probable cause to authorize a warrant. And if it's after an officer has arrested you, the phone's already been…

That's a good point. I mean, we all know that's essentially never true, but you can lie and say you forgot it and what can anyone do? We're not going to torture it out of people. I guess I was assuming the person with the password was an honorable person that obeys the law, but then again this is a person who's most…

Lots of fearmongering in those articles. The government's always been able to make you incriminate yourself. They can get a warrant to force you to turn over your keys so they can search your home for a meth lab. That's effectively self-incrimination. You know there's a meth lab in there and that if you give them the…

Which is nonsensical on its face. The fifth amendment and its historical jurisprudence prevents the police from requiring you to give adverse testimony (for example, they can't force you to answer their questions). A password just isn't testimonial. It's the functional equivalent of a key or a fingerprint, both of…

I believe eventually the courts will allow police to require disclosure of passwords. The only reason passwords are currently protected is that they're considered testimonial, and the police can't force you to give testimony. They can compel you to use your fingerprint, as noted above, and can also compel you to…

You're (mostly, I think) right, although I believe there are some monuments to the war dead in general. My point is more about how we remember history. I've got no problem with taking them down. I just hope it doesn't then turn into "everyone in the south was pure evil" and that's all we're allowed to think or say.

No, I get that. I'm not defending those so much as the general notion of how we remember it. I get the zeal to pull the statues down. I just hope it doesn't turn into "north good, south bad" and that's the only thing you're allowed to say and woe be to him who bothers to expand on that. It kinda gets to what I feel…

Perhaps. I just think it's overly simplistic to say "it was about slavery and nothing else". Picture a group of a hundred soldiers. Some wanted to preserve slavery. Some thought they were defending their homeland. Some had no idea why they were fighting but just did it because it was easier to follow orders. Some…

I disagree. The entire Northern position was that states couldn't secede, right? So if that's correct, they were Americans the whole time. American rebels, sure, but Americans all the same.

I was phrasing it in the manner the soldiers were told, which is "hey, those guys are invading us, go shoot at them". If you're told they're invading, to you they're invading. And as I write this I realize how little perspective we have on what that life was like. We assume they all knew what was happening, which of…

It occurs to me that so much of this ends up being like it's a TV show. If you're watching it on Twitter, it's like "yessss, badass show!". In the real world, is badass really what we want? Because I have a feeling that for most of us, seeing mobs running around pulling down statues and defacing memorials in the real…

No one's arguing they have no meaning. The question is: what does removing them accomplish? It makes you and other folks feel good. That's valid, but it's really no more than a moral victory. Which, fine, sometimes you need moral victories, but really only because they lead to actual victories in the future, and…

Opportunity cost. Every municipality has a fixed amount of resources with which to carry out its tasks. When some of those resources are tasked to take down monuments, they can't be used for other things that arguably would be more useful. So yes, while it's technically true that we can do both, it has a cost.

I can't stand the current trend to effectively say that the Nazis and the Confederacy are basically the same. No one with a shred of intelligence disputes slavery was wrong. Can't we all agree genocide is worse? And can't we remember that Nazi Germany invaded a ton of countries? The Confederacy was in the wrong, but…

You really think that a bunch of poor kids from farms in the south who were told to go shoot at the people who were invading their states constitute "enemies of America"? They weren't the ones who decided to go to war. They were just the cannon fodder sent out to die in service of those who made that decision. If you…