Originally post at Anti-aggressionleague.com
Source: Institute for Justice
In another blow to the fourth amendment, the Minnesota supreme court decided that probable cause isn't a necessary condition to obtain a search warrant for rental property in Wiebsick v. Golden Valley. The ruling allows city inspectors to continue using administrative warrants to search rental properties without probable cause or even suspicion of any illegal activity or code violations, and takes away tenants' and landlords' 4th amendment protection against arbitrary searches of their property. The government reserves the right, at all times, to come and go as they please, scrutinizing even the most trivial details of their homes including how well they scrubbed the toilet and whether they keep the dishwasher loaded. This is really the heart of the matter; once you remove a civil liberty the potential for abuse of authority multiplies indefinitely. The beauracratic power trip, like a cocaine addiction, knows no end. When the city can regulate how often you clean your home and do dishes you have no private life; you might as well live in a glass house. The control freaks want to manage every aspect of their lives, and not for their own good or health or for the value of the landlord's property. The only people with a vested interest in the tenants' own good and health are the tenants themselves. Likewise, the only person with a vested interest in maintaining the landlord's property is the landlord. A government's only vested interest is revenue generation to stuff their bloated salaries and collect their bloated pensions at the conclusion of their unproductive, parasitic careers; anything else is secondary. This won't end until people stop treating politicians and bureaucrats like angels sent from on high and recognize them for the sociopathic scumbags they are.