Well, for starters, civil forfeiture is about your non-living stuff, and the 4th Amendment applies to YOU

By that logic, attaching a GPS-tracker to your car would not fall under the Amendment either.

No, the Amendment does not just cover your person, but also "houses, papers, and effects". How can those be taken away by a cop without not only a trial, but even a Judge-issues warrant, I do not know... It is just so glaringly unconstitutional, it boggles the mind.

And of course, our hopey-changey President insists on making a prosecutor, who made herself particularly infamous using such confiscations, into a new Attorney General...

An obsession with "humanities" is just as dangerous as the one with engineering.

But the one obsession to rule them all is that with idea, that the government needs to step in and ensure everybody is doing, what the government (currently) considers best. It not only robs the citizens of freedom to decide for ourselves and our children, it also leads to danger and lost lives.

Consider the earlier change of government's doctrine to the exact opposite direction: for decades fat used to be bad for you, but not any more — now it the sugar, that's evil — how do they tell the last dying diabetic, it was all a mistake?

We are now collectively executing a similar pivot from "humanities" to engineering, for better or worse. But the underlying assumption remains: were it not for the omniscient and benevolent government officials, the adorable (mostly) individual slobs they've got for citizenry wouldn't learn or do anything to improve their own lot themselves.

Can we get rid of this obsession, please? Then we wouldn't need to worry about the others so much...

yeah, given that we're not any closer to an AI that would NEED those three laws

The robots Asimov imagined (whatever their brain) did not have to be bound by the three laws. They were deliberately designed that way.

And that's exactly the complain — the brains we currently devise are not being built those hard limits.

they don't make any choices nor do they ponder the choices or have any capability to make a choice.

Yes, the "syntactic" ones do not. But we are on the verge of real ("semantic") AI, and those better have some limits built-in, or some nasty predictions might materialize instead of Asimov's comfortable robot-assisted world.

There will always be stooges in any movement

Well, the opposition to the Korean war — as I outlined from the get-go — never rose to anywhere the same pitch. Not while the war was running, not later. Soldiers returning from Vietnam war were "baby-killers", but those who came back from Korea were not. The "peace-movement" being infested by stooges is a confirmed theory that explains all of the known facts. It may be difficult for you to accept, probably, because you and/or your parents participated — without knowing, who got the ball rolling, of course, being sincere useful idiots — but that's what it is.

Meanwhile, I noticed, that every post I make here gets marked as "Troll" within minutes and I'm getting tired of it. So I'm not posting again — you aren't going to admit it and the anonymous collective with too many mod-points are too cowardly to speak-up.

As it turns out it was actually a very well informed protest movement as the invasion of Iraq was by any metric a disaster.

The currently-existing "disaster" was not at all inevitable, and it did not become a disaster for any of the reasons known at the time.of those coordinated protests.

but I doubt many [Russians] are actually backing the invasion

Yes, unfortunately, many are. Though Putin's support is nowhere near he enjoys in Russia (86%), plenty in the diaspora approve of him or outright like him.

Fringe opinion-makers whom I'd never heard of. I don't think they're really affecting anything.

Well, you may not like Michael Savage, but he certainly is not "a fringe"... And the already mentioned Justin Raimondo has his loyal following.

It should be noted that the West's hands aren't completely clean in this. NATO was started as an anti-Russia alliance

There you go! NATO was meant to check USSR's advancement further into Europe — without it more countries would've shared the fate of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and others. Because while NATO membership was voluntary, membership of the Warsaw Pact was not. And the Pact invaded those, who tried to get out. What's "unclean" about NATO, I'll never know.

expanding into former Warsaw pact countries after the end of the Cold War was absolutely moronic. Without that expansion there's a decent chance that everyone is still on relatively good terms.

Huh? If they weren't NATO-members, Baltic states would've been taken over by the same "polite" troops long ago. Moldova and Georgia were invaded before Ukraine.

But, it is interesting... So, in your peace-loving opinion, NATO should've rejected Eastern Europe's attempts to join it to please Russia... Just how do you justify this? What sort of ethical standards do you have? What books did momma read to you? Should the wisest of the Three Pigs have rejected his brothers' attempts to hide in his masonry house — so as not to aggravate the Wolf? Wow!

Again remember many grew up in the USSR, people are going to naturally defend their side.

I grew up in the USSR too, you insensitive clod.

But in a fight between Russia and Ukraine many will be drawn to defend the entity they identify more with from their youth.

Point is, their propaganda works — Obama's lukewarm response to Putin's bona-fide textbook evil is evidence of it. It took him months to authorize "non-lethal" supplies (blankets, tents, rations) for Ukraine's defendants. And even today things like helmets and body-armor are still not authorized.

Because he and his people aren't paying attention. Either that, or — which is the same thing — they know, their electoral base is not paying attention.

Not sure, how this is "news for nerds", but I like it. Amazon have been quite amazin (sorry) over the years. So much so, I fear, when they stop being quite so amazing, it will take a while for decent competition to spring back up.

the court should be quite capable of determining without the help of advantageous timing by prosecutors to avoid their pervue

Yes, I'm sure, a court would be quite capable of dismissing any attempts to muddy the waters by an unrelated crime. The defense could've just as well brought up one of the agents' past jaywalking or some even a more serious (alleged) misdeed.

The prosecutor would've objected on the grounds of irrelevancy and the judge would've sustained the objection right away.

Seriously, imagine: "Your honor, we ask for this DUI case to be dismissed with prejudice on account of the arresting policeman stealing the whiskey bottle from my client's car after arresting him..."

Nonsense. The "fruit of the poisonous tree" metaphore refers to illegally-obtained evidence. Stuff stolen from the evidence locker — after it was legally collected — has nothing to do with it.

You're not overestimating the enemy's impact, you're accusing your ideological opponents of being stooges.

The links I've posted by now confirm beyond reasonable doubt, that they (or some of them, anyway) are, in fact, stooges. That's a settled question. Just how many — that's a problem of (under/over)estimation.

a) People expect a lot more of the US than Russia

Khm, it does not seem like many people think, Russia is doing anything wrong.

b) by invading Iraq it helps legitimize things like Ukraine

Your Bush-blaming fails. Putin's number one justification (at least within Russia) was not Iraq, but Kosovo — for over a year now Russians online are arguing, that if it was Ok for the US to run a referendum there, it is Ok for Russia to run one in Crimea. (That, unlike Americans in Kosovo, Russian occupiers of Crimea had an obvious conflict-of-interest seems to have escaped their attention.)

Greece in particular might have a legitimate problem

Greece is an EU-member and can break the union's consensus-driven foreign policy.

in the English speaking West Russian propaganda is a joke.

It is good, you've kept a level head, but I've already given you a number of links to English-speaking opinion-makers, who were affected by KremlinTV. Another aspect you are ignoring is the Russian-diaspora living in the West. They still watch nostalgic movies on Russian channels and the propaganda "analysis" in between. Then, when asked about current events by their non-Russian peers, they help spread Putin's point of view.

I just came back from Germany — both in Munich and Frankfurt there are pro-Putin signs on the walls and fences. His support there is mostly among Socialists, but those assholes are a considerable power there — and Merkel has to defend herself from their sniping.

Putin's evil is, indeed, obvious to those paying attention, but there are too few of those in the comfortable West today — the others' short attention spans can be easily swayed by his propaganda efforts.

He probably does have a few days until his 60 day deadline to appeal lapses though.

What relevance to his facilitating drug-trafficking does the prosecuting agents' unrelated misconduct have?

Bitcoin, banknotes, or gold — whatever the pigs tried to steal — he is still guilty of a (different) crime.

Hopefully, he and the duo of thieves will share the prison floor running into each other for years to come...

Why they didn't quite work as intended.

Oh, yes. But in none of them has a robot actually done harm to a human — and where that almost happened, the fault was with the modified 1st Law...

So, reality catches up with science fiction!

Yes, Asimov did predict robophobia. Too bad, his other prediction in this area has not come true. Not yet, anyway...

Though I agree with you on the matter of Michael Brown, your attempt to conflate him with Miriam Carey needs to be countered.

Unlike Mr. Brown, who attacked the sole officer present. Although her (successful) attempt to drive through a fence-segment placed in front of her car may be considered an attack on the man, who placed it there, the multiple officers shooting her later had no reasons to fear for their lives, when they opened fire — and that's important.

Officer Wilson acted in self-defense shooting Mr. Brown. There was no reason for Secret Service et al. to kill Ms. Carey — though they did have ample reasons to want to arrest her...

That said, I find it strange, that her race was not immediately known — and that her death did not cause any "Black lives matter" protests. In fact, I didn't know, she was Black until I opened the above-posted link. I guess, there just was no need at the time to trump-up the police's supposed "racism" — or, maybe, the Federal officers reporting to Barack Obama and Eric Holder just can not be "racist" no matter who they kill any why...