Pleading the Fifth-Lois Lerner, a former senior IRS official, can plead the Fifth to protect herself from incriminating statements before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, regarding the targeting of Tea Party non profits by the IRS. But how much of the Fifth Amendment is in tact?
Currently it is used with great regularity to hide government misconduct. Citizens rights have been so diminished by the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act that we feel like we are in Pre World War ll, Germany.
Using a mix of 9/11 thirst for revenge and a fear of living in a new culture of terror, our government has legislated away our constitutional rights, though they were guaranteed, and the government will never look back. No apologies. The Supreme Court has been a SUPREME failure in preventing it and incrementally aided in our destruction.
Our Fifth Amendment has been bludgeoned to death by a stealth world domination view and our rights were collateral damage. When the rights of other nations are compromised, in the name of some higher good, our rights have no greater standing. We must guard their rights as if they were our own. (Read the rest of Lisa Cerda’s perspective here).
(Lisa Cerda is the editor of AmericanOutrage.us and a contributor to CityWatch.)
-cw
