Much Crunchy Goodness

Say Uncle has several posts up that are just excellent. Start at the top and work down, but this one really pissed me off. It refers to this Fox News story about civil rights abuses: Citizens Mugged by the State.

Of particular interest to me (though they all pissed me off) were the two due to the War on (some) Drugs™:

Tax consultant Judith Roderick, 55, of Lacey, Wash., had prepared a land trust for a client who was later charged with growing marijuana. The Thurston County Narcotics Task Force seized Roderick’s home, her bank accounts and her business records during their investigation into whether she knew the client had used drug money to buy the land. Left destitute by the seizures, Roderick had to represent herself in court. It took over a year for prosecutors to decide they had no case.

Classic car restorer Dan Peruchi, 35, of Fort Worth, Texas, was driving a vehicle he had just purchased through West Memphis, Ark., when police stopped him. They seized $18,890 in cash Peruchi was carrying for car purchases because a drug-sniffing dog reacted as if some of the bills had once been in contact with cocaine.

No charges were filed against Peruchi, and there was no evidence of drug involvement. But he never got his money back.

So the Fourth and Fifth Amendments have been gutted. No wonder they want to strip us of the Second.

Read the whole thing. And stop thinking that government is a benign thing.