Probable Cause

“It is every Americans’ right and OBLIGATION to read and interpret the Constitution for himself.”
- Thomas Jefferson, emphasis added.

NOTE:
This link articulates it a little more clearly that I do here, and uses the legal terms and explains what they mean:
http://stason.org/TULARC/society/lawful-arrest/1-2-What-is-Probable-Cause.html

Just a thought about the term “probable cause”.

If you are a lawyer, you will most likely disagree with this video. The origins of the term “probable cause” go back further than the 4th Amendment, but the term “cause”, in my opinion, SHOULD be apparent to anyone who understands what the word “cause” means - something which is the ORIGIN of some SPECIFIC event.

The term “probable cause”, I believe, has been transformed over the years. Notable court cases that have done this have been:
Illinois v. Gates (1983),
Terry v. Ohio (1968),
United States v. Matlock, 415 U. S. 164 (1974),
Georgia v. Randolph, 126 S. Ct. 1515 (2006),
and New Jersey v. T. L. O. (1985).

NOW, the term has come to mean a POTENTIAL cause of a POSSIBLE crime rather than the plain English definition of a PROBABLE cause of a specific EFFECT (a crime that has been committed).

This bastardization of the language has been the rallying cry for many people, mostly in government, to arrest and search people based on “reasonable suspicion” that a crime MAY have taken place, is taking place, or may take place in the future.


“On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which
it was passed.”
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823

This video is simply a reflection on the terms used and a layman’s analysis of the words found in the constitution. If a layman can’t understand the constitution without the government explaining to him what it REALLY means, it’s not very useful for protecting that layman from government overstepping it’s bounds.