You Don’t Know What You Loosing Because you Don’t know What You Got

That’s right! Most americans don’t know their rights. Don’t know what rights they are given in this country of ours. Americans don’t know their rights either under the constitution or the local library's rules and regulations. You say you don’t go the library anymore and for the constitution you get a lawyer. Because you are smart enough to know to know that there was a Supreme Court decision that said that every one is to be given counsel. You seen it on the movies and CIS shows all the time; “ I want a lawyer” "If you can’t afford one one will be given to you at no charge to you."
Bingo! That’s the right we might be loosing now. According to republicans all we need is the 2nd amendment and the right to bear arms, even if your well organize militia are the drivers on the thruway. Very organize they all travel in the direction they are going…most of the time. 

If you have never gotten into trouble and never needed a lawyer on a criminal case, chances are as you get older you will. It’s like drivers who never had an accident. The Insurance Institute says that after you reach middle age your chances will jump to 20%. That’s how averages are. The more you use them, the closer you get to the magic non wanted numbers of 80-100%. So my question to you is, would you have that lawyer you can’t pay given to you without charge because you allowed a kid to stay overnight to play with your kids and now the kid says something bad about you. You get my meaning by now.                     adamfoxie*

 Fifty years ago, a letter from a petty thief inspired the US Supreme Court to grant all criminal suspects the right to legal counsel—but today that right is effectively ebbing away, writes Andrew Cohen in The Atlantic. The thief was Clarence Gideon, and his case became the landmark Supreme Court decision of Gideon v. Wainwright. "Gideon's story is really a fable," writes Cohen. "A mighty court hears the cry of the lowliest man." That lowly man won an attorney for himself and for all other poor criminal defendants in felony trials who followed. But today the federal government won't force states to fund the system, so overworked public attorneys have little time to represent their clients.

The problem is nothing new, but it's gotten worse as states cut the budgets of public defender programs—particularly in the South, where Texas refuses to fund attorneys for the poor and Georgia herds juveniles through the system "like cattle," writes Cohen. And it's no mistake: States are purposely pressuring defendants to make plea deals, and rendering them unable to review their conviction with an attorney. Solutions? Civil libertarians could sue states into funding the system, or Congress could pass a law that mandates federal support. Until then, writes Cohen, "we are just lying to ourselves and each other when we pretend that there is equal justice in America." Click for his full article.