All Maine Matters

Letters to the Editor

Bob Stone,

Your recent article in All Maine Matters on warrantless searches does not do justice to the intelligence of the Maine people. In fact, I find it rather demeaning and condescending.

You write, "When thinking of wire tapping or snooping, we are led to think of the way it was presented to us in the movies in the 1960's. A mysterious white van is parked down the street from the wire tapped criminal's apartment. Several FBI agents sit in the cramped van, swilling down bad coffee and munching on powered sugar donuts, all the while wearing big black earphones, absentmindedly leafing through dog eared copies of Playboy magazine. When a phone call came over the wire tapped line, a reel to reel tape recorder captured every word."

You go on to say, "well, it is now 2006 and snooping is done completely differently these days."

Bob, don't you give the Maine people any credit for knowing this? Do you look at us as being ,"hicks from the sticks?" When us hicks from the sticks see these massive antennas shaped like huge balls, we do not realize what they are? When people from government agencies come forth and say that our government is taking in millions of line phone, cell phone, and satellite phone calls and monitoring emails every day, we believe these millions of calls and emails are terrorist calls or Americans calling or Emailing terrorists overseas?

Are we unable to realize we are not in the sixties? Is there not a FISA court to give permission for these calls to be wire tapped? Does not the government have a rather large time period, if time is short, to report its actions? Has not the FISA court given permission for thousands of wire tappings, while denying very few? Has no one in the government ever heard of the Fourth Amendment?

You say the congress has passed a law allowing these millions of the American people to be wire tapped. Do you suppose no one in congress knows that "the general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it." [16 Am jur 2d, Sec 177 late 2d, Sec 256]. Is our congress that ignorant of the LAWS of the nation? Or do they believe We the People are?

In 2005, the Judiciary Committee refused the Maine people the right to a fully informed jury. When I asked them why, one committee member, Representative Rod Carr replied, "I am afraid that jury trials would end up being decided not by the evidence, but by which sad story the jury believed."

The Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to not present the bill to a floor vote. Representative Carr and the Judiciary Committee seem to believe the Maine people are simple-minded enough to turn murderers, rapists, and child molesters out on the streets to prey upon our wives and children if we are told a "sad story."

You, Bob Stone, and Representative Carr seem to have the same mindset. Do you and Representative Carr have such superior intellects that it is above the rest of the people of Maine?

I believe both you and Representative Rod Carr owe the Maine people an apology. One was never forthcoming from Representative Carr. Will one be forthcoming from Bob Stone?

Bud Landry
Abbott

Editor’s note: Mr. Landry is referring to Bob Stone’s article “Warrantless Searches,” which appeared in our January issue.

We do publish anonymous letters to the editor, or those signed with a pseudonym.