Obama: A Civil Liberties Champion?
During the election, I remember President Obama slamming the previous administration for what he thought were attacks on civil liberties. He said he would reverse those things.
Well, here is something interesting. In an interview he did with John Walsh, of America’s Most Wanted, Obama said he supported the mandatory DNA testing of every American arrested to “tighten the grip around folks who commit crime”.
Ok, help me out here. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe we are innocent until proven guilty. There are a lot of people who are arrested and never charged because either there is no evidence to support the arrest or they were just arrested in the heat of the moment and later, when things are sorted out, things show they were not involved. So, it seems that our leader believes everyone who is arrested is guilty. Hmmm, I’d hate to have him as my attorney…remember, they guy supposedly went to law school.
Courts have said that you can collect DNA from convicted people because they have lost some of their rights due to their being convicted, but to do this to someone who is supposed innocent at the time is a bad thing.
No, DNA does not help identify an individual once they have been arrested. Fingerprints do that. Can DNA be linked to a crime, if it can be suspected the individual was involved? Yes. However, I think that this statement by the President shows that he is no friend to civil liberties or or rights under the Constitution which he has shown to have a disdain for, despite his oath to “support and defend” it.
