F Books

Joshua, is a book that can be appreciated
by all. I found it to be a great source for
bedtime discussion with my two boys.
They are 5 and 7 yrs. old. Joshua, helps
introduce key spiritual issues. Chapter by
chapter, the book gently reminds us of what
God is all about. The book also guides us
beyond our misconceptions and fears,
imposed on us by certain religions and churchs.

I liked this book because it was easy
reading, and because of its ability to relate
to me and my life. This book, is about love
and about what God should be to those who
seek him. I want to thank Mr. Girzone for a
beautifully written book. M. Carroll

A Free Bible Course and Study Guides are available on this book from http://www.sunlink.net/~brron

"Blue Mountain" with its wide range of poetry, proverbs, excerpts,and brief essays celebrating the earth was easily the best collection of its kind recently read. It was healing medicine for environmental melancholia and despair. Even though it does nothing to change the daily headlines, the renewal of spirit was a spring tonic for the soul.

Reading it again can even ignite a smoldering ember of hope.

Bombers, Bolsheviks, and Bootleggers: A Study in Constitutional Subversion, by Leon F. Scully, Jr. (Publius, 464 pp., $29.95)

Since 1914, American courts have held that the fruits of an illegal search are inadmissible, regardless of their bearing on the case. Neither the Fourth Amendment nor any other constitutional provision requires this conclusion. Yet in the name of deterring police misconduct, the "exclusionary rule" routinely derails prosecutions, arguably to the frustration of justice (and certainly to that of the public). While others have made the case that the exclusionary rule was invented by judges, Leon Scully goes further, contending that the "test cases" establishing the rule were in fact "a series of frauds perpetrated on the Supreme Court and the American people."

Scully presents a broad view of these cases, including the political pressures on the actors involved, beginning with Weeks v. United States, the 1914 Supreme Court decision that created the exclusionary rule. Fremont Weeks was convicted of using the mails illegally to transport lottery tickets; to secure the evidence against him, police had entered his house without a warrant. The Court did not dispute the evidence, but, reasoning that the police had stepped over constitutional bounds in obtaining it, overturned the conviction. Scully argues that the Court ignored the probable cause that a crime had been committed, which justified the search.

To Scully, the result in Weeks was all too convenient for the Progressive movement in light of Ryan v. United States, also called the "Dynamiters case," a politically charged prosecution of union leaders who were accused of dynamiting the Los Angeles Times building in 1910. The Dynamiters case, which was ongoing at the time Weeks was decided, also involved allegations of illegal interstate transportation, and its outcome hinged on documents found with dynamite and alarm clocks in a basement vault halfway across the country. Without these documents the testimony of two other bombers who had turned state's evidence could not be corroborated. Scully notes that the wrongful police action alleged in Weeks was nearly identical to that alleged in the Dynamiters case; he concludes that Weeks was manipulated in order to obtain a precedent to dispose of the Dynamiters case, and to aid in the Progressives' relations with unions.

Scully's painstaking reconstruction of these and other cases makes a convincing argument that the precedential underpinnings of the exclusionary rule are judicially created precepts that lack grounding in the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment. His legal history is thus the story of an activist judiciary guided by the doctrine of an "evolving" Constitution, imposing political will instead of implementing constitutional principle. Scully's call for a return to the search for truth in courts of law deserves a wide hearing.