Florida Judge Finally Ends Drug Testing For Welfare Recipients

image of a urine sample

U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven ruled on Tuesday that Florida’s law that required welfare recipients to have drug tests before getting benefits violated the 4th amendment against unreasonable search and seizure. The state failed to show that poor people are more likely to use drugs or that testing poor people should be squeezed into the limits allowed by the US Supreme Court.

The judge’s ruling pretty much followed my line of argument on this topic in a previous post:

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Why Can’t We Drug Test Welfare Recipients? I Got Tested For My Job

image of a specimen cup with urine

Friends of mine who are somewhat liberal ask me, Why can’t we drug test welfare recipients? I got tested for my job. It’s true, many people are tested for drug use before being employed. Even the government tests their employees. That still doesn’t make testing welfare recipients constitutional. If the Fourth Amendment means anything it means the government has to have probable cause to test you for drugs. Having a bias toward poor people, thinking they must all be dirty and on drugs isn’t probable cause and it also doesn’t match with the actual evidence of drug use by people on public assistance.

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Why Do We Have To Choose Between Privacy Or Security?

created image of guy looking in a window with POLICE on shirt
If you aren’t doing anything wrong then this should not be a problem, right?

The media coverage over what National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden did, by publicly revealing the large surveillance program conducted by the NSA, included ridiculously breathless stories about his whereabouts, if the guy is a traitor (he’s not), and if Glenn Greenwald should be jailed for doing his job of reporting the story. What still isn’t being discussed is the reasons and methods behind the program Snowden exposed and why there isn’t much discussion about the accountability of the program. We have been given a false choice between privacy or security.

Bob Sullivan, on the NBC News website wrote a good essay about the problem of having the false choice of privacy or security:

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Dear Media: I Don’t Care Where Edward Snowden Is

photo of Edward Snowden
I don’t give a shit where Edward Snowden is

One of the big reasons I don’t trust ‘The Media’ nor like them much is their complicity in supporting the one percenters. Corporate control of news media gives us press releases passed off as facts and political talking points going unchallenged as long as they support the corporations. We see the same behavior in the coverage of whistle blower Edward Snowden, where ‘The Media’ is more concerned in his location than in the facts he disclosed about the domestic surveillance program by the NSA. Hey media, I don’t give a shit where the guy is – when are you going to talk about the spying he uncovered?

This past Sunday, corporate tool David Gregory said some stupid shit as David Sirota points out:

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Yay Congressional Bipartisanship! To Subvert The 4th Amendment! Yay??

Logo for the National Security Agency

There are actually times when Democrats and Republicans in Congress set aside their partisanship and work together. One is naming post offices and the other allowing the government to subvert our 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. In defending the NSA collecting phone numbers telecom members used, Congress members couldn’t give any specific examples that such intelligence collection actually stopped any specific attack and just said not to worry about it. When Congress tells us not to worry then we should worry especially when our civil rights are involved.

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