If you’re interested in becoming a martyr for Jonathan Landay and Tim Cavanaugh‘s version of the Fourth Amendment, here’s an easy way to do it. Put a bunch of contraband in your trunk, and drive a little faster than the speed limit – just fast enough that you might get a ticket, but not fast enough to stick out among ordinary speeders. Sooner or later, you’ll get pulled over. Maybe a cop will ask you if it’s OK to look around the car. If he does, say “sure, go ahead.” If he doesn’t, volunteer the topic on your own. Either way, he’ll find the stuff, arrest you and charge you criminally. Then, trot out the Reason equivalent of an attorney, and he’ll argue that the results of the search were inadmissible because the cop did not have … probable cause.

Dean Esmay has the story.

As Patterico noted a couple years back when coining the phrase “dumb aleck” to describe Dana Milbank, someone needs to explain to Tim Cavanaugh of Reason that sarcasm only works when you know what you are talking about. Cavanaugh, you may recall, is the Reason luminary who banned me from commenting at “Reason’s” aptly-named “Hit and Run” blog, for pointing out the fact that lawyer / Reason contributor Michael McMenamin was lying when he claimed Judith Miller was sentenced to a prison sentence (the term of which Miller herself mysteriously managed to short a few months later simply by promising to start obeying the law that had gotten her in there to begin with), pulls another doozy on Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, whom he accuses of “giv[ing] a less-than-strict constructionist reading” of the Fourth Amendment. Hayden’s crime? Apparently, it was having had the audacity to actually read the damned thing:

QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I’d like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I’m no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American’s right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use—

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually—the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure. That’s what it says.

QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

Apparently oblivious to the fact that Hayden was right, Cavanaugh goes on to quote “the Fightin’ Fourth” in its entirety, in not one language but two, as if to prove Hayden was wrong. I’ll skip the Spanish version, and focus instead on the two English versions, namely, the real one and the one Cavanaugh must have thought he was reading while busily cutting and pasting:

Real Amendment (as quoted, but apparently not understood, by Tim Cavanaugh):

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
[Emphasis added.]

Cavanaugh version:

The right of the people … blah blah blah … against … blah …. searches and seizures … blah blah blah …. probable cause … blah blah blah, hoo hah, Hayden’s a dumbass.

I look forward to Cavanaugh’s grammatically challenged reading of the remainder of his precious Constitution. Here are a few possibilities:

• The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, but only to the press.
• The Second Amendment guarantees the right of the people to be necessary and well-regulated, and the right of arms to keep and bear militias.
• The Third Amendment prohibits soldiers from being quartered in houses, but only if the owner consents, and then only if the occupation is in a manner prescribed by law.
• The Fifth Amendment prohibits your property from testifying against itself for public use, unless a grand jury has indicted it twice for the same offense without due process of law.
• The Sixth Amendment guarantees your right to speedy witnesses and to be confronted by your own counsel.
• The Seventh Amendment requires all common law suits to exceed $20.00.
• The Eighth Amendment prohibits the state from requiring excessively cruel and unusual bail, and also prohibits all fines and punishments of any kind.
• The Ninth Amendment prohibits anyone from using the Constitution to “deny or disparage others,” as I am doing to Cavanaugh in my blog entry, and as Cavanaugh himself attempted and failed miserably to do to Hayden in his.
• The Tenth Amendment provides that all powers not delegated to the federal government are prohibited to the states.

Those are just a few possibilities, of course. Once you start Cavanaugh-reading the Constitution, the opportunities are limitless.

UPDATE: Et tu, Uncly-Wuncly.

UPDATE x2: Orin Kerr has more, as does Adam White, who helpfully reprints the exchange in full.

Venezuelan president/dictator Hugo Chavez is threatening to ignore the Venezuelan Constitution and hold a referendum to extend his term to 2031. No word as to whether or not Jimmy Carter has signed off on it yet.

5/16 UPDATE: I have learned that NCO’s attempt to collect on my phony debt, while sleazy in a number of ways, was probably not fraudulent. Apparently, Bank of America’s policy is to hand questionable debts over to collection agencies immediately if they are assessed against accounts that have been closed – and also to hide this information where ordinary customer service representatives cannot find it. After getting a notice in writing from NCO, I called B of A and got the number for their “recovery” unit, which can see the transactions their ordinary customer service people can’t. The validity of that debt remains in dispute, but NCO’s role in attempting to collect it is not wrongful in and of itself (their methods are, but that’s another issue). As such, please note that to the best of my knowledge, NCO is merely a sleazy collection agency, not a fraud ring.

If you get any collection calls from “NCL NCO Financial Systems” or asking you to call (800) 394-3194, don’t give them any money. Call your local police and the FTC, instead. Today I received a voice message from a certain “Mr. Martin” of that allegedly existent outfit, informing me that it was “very important” I contact him at (800) 394-3194, Ext 5644, but neglecting to tell me why. When I called I was told that Bank of America had filed a claim against my Social Security Number for a $483.61 overdraft, and that it was now going to go immediately on my credit report if I didn’t pay up over the phone. When I pressed him for further details about the claim, he insisted he doesn’t get that information from the bank, so I’d have to contact B of A instead at (800) 432-1000. I was a tad bit skeptical, for a number of reasons:

1. B of A had never contacted me about any overdrafts.
2. I don’t even bank at B of A anymore.
3. When I did bank at B of A, I never had any overdrafts.
4. When I banked at B of A, I had overdraft protection, so if I had had any overdrafts they would have been charged to the associated credit card, not .
5. When I closed out my account at B of A, the bank confirmed I had a zero balance.
6. My old account at B of A was based in a California branch, which uses a different customer service number, (800) 622-8731. The number “Mr. Martin” gave me, (800) 432-1000, is a national number used in most other states. Not an unreasonable guess, however, if you’re trying to scam some random guy in Virginia whose credit report implies that he has a B of A account.

Unsurprisingly, my skepticism turned out to be warranted; a quick call to B of A confirmed that no such claim existed, that they wouldn’t have turned it over to these guys if it had. As it was now pretty clear NCL Financial Systems was a scam, I called them back to request a mailing address so I could send them a check. “Mr. Martin” informed me that they can only accept payment over the phone, and threatened to ding my credit report immediately if I did not pay up. I told him I had never been served with any demand in writing, and he put me on hold for 15 minutes. After that, I was handed over to a female “supervisor,” who reiterated that they can’t accept payment by any method other than telephone because the charge was now “delinquent.” I then requested that she fax me a copy of the report from the bank, so I could investigate it from there. Of course she wouldn’t do that, either, presumably for “privacy” reasons. O-kay.

UPDATE: Apparently I misheard their name, which is NCO Financial Systems, not NCL. I suspect this may be by design; call the 800 number yourself and see if you think they called themselves NCO or NCL. They’ve got plenty of Rip-Off Reports, both under their real name and under their accidentally-on-purpose misheard one. They also have a web site of their own.

UPDATE x2: The story keeps getting weirder. Now, after talking to a second round of customer service, it appears that some schlock made a charge against my account on April 25, a whopping 10 days before NCO started hounding me over this “delinquent” debt, in the amount of … you guessed it … $483.61. Meanwhile, some other schlock allowed the transaction to go forward even though the account had been closed for more than a month, and schlock #3 must have passed the information along to NCO as a joke.

UPDATE x3: See my comments at the topic of the post. B of A has finally fessed up to having turned this “debt” over to collections. That doesn’t make NCO’s collection methods any less sleazy, of course, but it does dispel the notion that they are a fraud ring, as I had originally suspected.

Today I purchased a fancy in-home stereo / surround sound system. What are you doing to make the day without illegal immigrants a success?

Michelle Malkin has the latest on the day to hate the Yankees. Good thing I live south of the Mason-Dixon line, else they might hate me, too. Also worth noting are some of the protest signs displayed on the flyer:

• RAISE WORKERS [sic] WAGES
• STOP LAYOFS [sic] AND UNION BUSTING
• Health Care is a Right
• Housing is a Right

Apparently, these guys didn’t get the memo about illegal immigrants being good for society because they don’t demand higher wages, object to being laid “of” or expect taxpayers to provide them with free housing, free health care, and Lord knows what else.