Judge Napolitano to Glenn Beck: America is becoming dangerously close to a police state

[jct74]

Judge Napolitano: America Is Becoming ‘Dangerously Close to a Police State’

Erica Ritz
Dec. 2, 2014 7:35pm




Judge Andrew Napolitano on Tuesday warned that America is becoming “dangerously close to a police state.”

“The definition of a police state is when the government’s prime concern is for its own safety, not for the lives, liberty and property of the people it has sworn to protect,” Napolitano said on The Glenn Beck Program. “That is a very, very dangerous place in which to be.”

According to Napolitano, America is becoming more of a police state because of the “over-militarization of the police — which occurred in the last 12 years under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama,” but also because of entrenched bureaucracy.

“When … the bureaucracy remains the same no matter who the president is, no matter who the governor is, no matter who the mayor is, and when the attitude on the part of those unseen people in the government is, ‘Our job is to keep ourselves in power,’ then we have lost control,” Napolitano remarked.

“When the first rule of government is for government to look out for itself, it is no longer the servant. It is the master,” Napolitano added. “Are we there? No. Can we see that in your lifetime and mine? Perhaps.”

...

read more:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...becoming-dangerously-close-to-a-police-state/

 

[JK/SEA]

i take issue.

becoming?

i know. The Judge has to parse his comments and not sound so TRUTHFUL,

 

[willwash]

The Judge is losing some serious weight! Good for him!

 

[Anti Federalist]

“When the first rule of government is for government to look out for itself, it is no longer the servant. It is the master,” Napolitano added. “Are we there? No. Can we see that in your lifetime and mine? Perhaps.”

Not there yet?

LOL

 

[Anti Federalist]

“When the first rule of government is for government to look out for itself, it is no longer the servant. It is the master,” Napolitano added. “Are we there? No. Can we see that in your lifetime and mine? Perhaps.”

Not there yet?

LOL

 

[AuH20]

Not there yet?

LOL

The apparatus is in place though. It's as simple as giving an order.

 

[A Son of Liberty]

The apparatus is in place though. It's as simple as giving an order.

AGAIN, the optics need not mimic Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia for there to be a police state in place. The regime can be every bit as authoritarian without some of the more graphic trappings of those states for the people to suffer in so many similar ways.

 

[Weston White]

The “police state” apparatus is in place and it may be instantaneously mobilized at will—as a regional multi-agency-consortium, this much was observed all throughout Katrina, Waco, Ruby Ridge, the national protests of 2010-2012 (i.e., OWS, Super Pac, Tea Party, etc?), and from 9/11 to the present.

 

[tod evans]

The Judge is severely mistaken where at 5:50 he states; "The overmilitarization of kops as occurred in the last 12 years."

Intercity kops became over militarized in the mid to late '70's and the smaller towns during the 80's.

This militarization went hand in hand with Tricky Dicks War on Drugs.

 

[ghengis86]

The Judge is severely mistaken where at 5:50 he states; "The overmilitarization of kops as occurred in the last 12 years."

Intercity kops became over militarized in the mid to late '70's and the smaller towns during the 80's.

This militarization went hand in hand with Tricky Dicks War on Drugs.

Good ol Reagan did a bang up job of continuing and expanding the war on some drugs. That was the catalyst, and now the war on some terrorists has taken the baton and run with it.

And I too disagree with the Judge; we are already living in a police state.

 

[donnay]

Then Bill Clinton expanded the police state with his "I didn't inhale" war on drugs.

The Beginning:

The Drug War legacy of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush included property forfeiture, expanded police powers and a zero- tolerance policy, along with an expanded prison system to accommodate all those who bucked the law. President Bill Clinton inherited these. But when he first took office, many in the drug-policy-reform movement were optimistic that the man demonized by his right-wing opponents as an ex-hippie draft dodger would reverse this legacy.

Instead, doomed by his politically disastrous "I did not inhale" campaign line, he has cravenly allowed federal, state and local law enforcement to expand all the tools left to him. His record might be worse than those of Reagan or Bush.

In the Clinton years, police overreach in the name of the Drug War shredded much of what remained of the Bill of Rights. And those most frequently caught in its web were not the "drug kingpins" legislators claimed to be going after. Mothers, fathers, small-time dealers, medical-marijuana users and even children were caught in a criminal- justice system so overgrown no one is immune to the new powers Johnny Law uses to protect us from ourselves. And while much of the horror heaped on the American public has occurred at the state and local levels, the tenor of the times begins at the top-which places the responsibility squarely at Bill Clinton's feet.

Prison Expansion:

When Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, the violent crack epidemic of the late 1980s was already subsiding. Nonetheless, the galloping expansion of police powers and the prison system didn't skip a beat, and law enforcement shifted to a new emphasis on marijuana. When Clinton entered office, the prison population-local, state and federal-was about 1.3 million. As he leaves, that number has ballooned to over 2 million, the highest rate of incarceration-as well as the highest total number behind bars-in a democratic state in the history of the world.

Nearly 60% of federal and 25% of state prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses. Hundreds of new prisons have been built to accommodate them, giving rise to a prison-industrial complex that defies imagination. New drug courts and judges have been added to state and federal rosters; 100,000 new police, with their attendant paraphernalia-guns, cruisers, station houses and adjunct non- uniformed personnel-have been hired to search out small-time drug users; tens of thousands of jail and prison guards have been added to state and federal payrolls. There has not been such a boon to public construction since the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. Our military and Drug Enforcement Administration forces overseas have exponentially expanded as well, particularly in Latin America. All of this has been an enormous help to booming Clinton's economy. The strategy was brilliantly devised: Increase incarceration by three- quarters of a million, add a couple of million workers to create and maintain the prison infrastructure, and voila! Lower unemployment and a healthier economy. And to help pay for it all, the Feds and states used a tool that became available only a few years before Clinton's inauguration: forfeiture.

http://www.mapinc.org/newscfdp/v01/n087/a05.html?6793

Imagine a Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton in 2016?

 

[jtap]

Of course Beck wants Ted Cruz for president.

 

[jon4liberty]

He didn't have to say who he wanted to be president yet he did. He is planting the seed in his viewers Cruz '16 now that the elections are over he now is considered "libertarian/tea party" now he will steer the movement the wrong direction as he has in the past. Get beck videos off these forums he has no place here

 

[Christian Liberty]

Not there yet?

LOL

Yeah, I was going to ask that to. That said, considering how solid the Judge is on libertarian issues, I'm going to chalk it up to either miswording or strategy, considering Napolitano has openly declared himself to be an anarcho-capitalist He knows...

 

[Christian Liberty]

He didn't have to say who he wanted to be president yet he did. He is planting the seed in his viewers Cruz '16 now that the elections are over he now is considered "libertarian/tea party" now he will steer the movement the wrong direction as he has in the past. Get beck videos off these forums he has no place here

I'm guessing it was posted for Judge Nap, not Beck.