Last week the Supreme Court ruled five to four that “suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations,” according to the Associated Press. In other words, you do have the right to remain silent and to a lawyer, but only if you know any better and remember to announce your silence aloud. But maybe you haven’t heard that yet another of your civil liberties has been stripped away from you. Because after all this has gone virtually unreported by the “news”. New Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed with the absurdity of the ruling, noting in her dissent, “Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent—which counterintuitively, requires them to speak.” Sadly, according to The Los Angeles Times, the “ruling is in line with the position taken by the Obama administration and Supreme Court nominee U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan. In December, she filed a brief on the side of Michigan prosecutors and argued that ‘the government need not prove that a suspect expressly waived his rights.’” It makes you wonder about Obama a bit, or maybe the presidency in general. Maybe in today’s world the personality behind the desk isn’t as important anymore. You definitely got a sense there was difference between the motivations and philosophies of the Bush and Clinton administrations, but other than the lack of born-again Christian crusading fervor that drove the Bush administration there hasn’t been much change on the civil liberties front.

- reblogged from newdandyism.com