Deroy Murdock. Published Friday, May 12, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Deroy Murdock is a senior fellow with the AtlasEconomic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Va., and writes from New York City.
By snatching Elian Gonzalez from his great-uncle's Miami home, the Clinton-Reno regime tip-toed around or trampled at least half of the Bill of Rights' 10 amendments. Here are the constitutional guarantees that now lie tattered:
The First Amendment's freedom of the press provision could not shield an NBC News crew from abuse. Federal agents kicked cameraman Tony Zumbado in the stomach, yanked an audio cable from his camera and otherwise disabled his gear. He told NBC: ``[The feds] put their foot on my back and told me
not to move or else they were going to shoot.''
Soundman Gustavo Moller was struck in the head by another officer's rifle and ordered to be still or be shot. Moller told me he suffered a small gash, ``but because it was the forehead, it was bleeding a lot.''
NBC has asked the Immigration and Naturalization Service to explain its actions and why, as NBC News Vice President Bill Wheatley told the Associated Press, ``our people weren't able to do their work because of the actions of agents.''
INS Commissioner Doris Meissner told CBS that overwhelming force was necessary due to ``the possibility that there might be guns'' in the Gonzalez home. So what? The Second Amendment guarantees the right ``to keep and bear arms.'' If the mere presence of firearms on private property justifies
such federal behavior, residents of the 40 percent of American homes with guns should sleep with their eyes open.
By using an improper search warrant, the Justice Department violated Fourth Amendment restrictions against ``unreasonable searches and seizures.'' This document was signed not during business hours by the federal judge hearing Elian's case, but on Good Friday at 7:20 p.m. by a magistrate
unfamiliar with the matter. The warrant application claimed that Elian was ``concealed,'' which he wasn't, and that he's ``an illegal alien,'' which he isn't. The affidavit also failed to mention Lazaro Gonzalez's alleged weapons that supposedly required a SWAT team's response.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a Clinton ally, dismisses this warrant and says the administration, ``acted lawlessly.'' As he told Fox News: ``It's a dangerous day for all Americans.''
The Sixth Amendment includes the right to ``the assistance of counsel'' in criminal proceedings. Elian is no crook, but the spirit of this amendment suggests that he may see the lawyers who are arguing his asylum case. Elian's attorneys currently cannot contact him or even observe his condition
while surrounded by U.S. marshals.
Even worse, the only lawyer in touch with Elian is Greg Craig, his father's counsel, who is working to vacate the Cuban castaway's asylum application. This is like having Leonid Brezhnev represent Alexander Solzhenitsyn in court.
The 10th Amendment reserves powers ``to the states respectively, or to the people'' that are not constitutionally delegated to the federal government. Nonetheless, Washington intervened in a child-custody matter routinely handled by state authorities.
The Justice Department alerted then-Miami Police Chief William O'Brien before ``Operation Reunion'' and reportedly ordered him not to inform Miami Mayor Joe Carollo. Carollo had grown close to the Gonzalez family and might have broadcast the news. Still, federal officials should not have meddled
with a local government by constructing a wall of silence between a police chief and his popularly elected boss.
YOU COULD BE NEXT
Justice's contempt for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals insults the separation of powers. The department was not deterred by the court's refusal to grant an order to transfer Elian from his great-uncle to his father. When a three-judge federal panel rejected her plan, Jackboot Janet executed it
anyway. Of course, all this could have been avoided had Reno simply waited until yesterday's court hearing to make her family-reunification case.
Bill Clinton and Janet Reno harbor neither respect nor reverence for the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. They merely use them to line the federal Leviathan's cage.
Yet an April 24 Gallup Poll revealed that 60 percent of Americans applaud the extra-legal abduction of a 6-year-old boy. This matters because if the president and attorney general skate past this abuse of power, the next time federal agents storm a private home, waving a flimsy search warrant,
the door they batter down might be yours.
murdock2000@ibm.net
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