Republicans Vote Down the 4th Amendment (sort of)

It's amazing what you find on the 'net. I had a brainlock while doing my last post on McClellan leaving his job and had to look up the 4th ammendment to make sure I had the right one when I stumbled across this web page on the personal site of Michael DuVernois, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. Here's what the page says:

February 7, 1995 - House Republicans Vote Down Fourth Amendment

During the debate today over the House Republicans' bill about the Exclusionary Rule, the House Black Caucus introduced an amendment to the bill that the Republicans promptly voted down. The amendment turned out to be the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, verbatim. The House Republicans were "chagrined." The vote was 303-121, meaning that a number of Democrats joined the Republicans.

Now, I checked the main page of DuVernois' site out and I can't tell if this is a joke or not. I looked it up on Snopes.Com and found no myths mentioning the 4th ammendment. Googling the headline at the top of DuVernois' page on the voting down of the 4th ammendment and got this page at CIOS.org, which the server at CIOS.org won't let you view unless you are a member. Luckily, Google's cache let's you view it without joining anything. Here's what's on that page:

Date: Sat, 18 Feb 1995 21:09:17 -0500
[from] ai182_at_cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Wayne Draznin)
Subject: 4th ammendment

Got this off of the Viscom list. Thought folks would be
interested.

Wayne Draznin

Subject: Republicans Vote Down 4th Amendment in Bill of Rights (fwd)

This is a repost from:
Don Pratt
Syracuse University

---- Forwarded message ---
Date sent: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 08:54:34 EST
Send reply to Association of Black Sociologists


Here is a little tidbit that should cause everyone on this
list to say Hmmm. a funny (as in "disturbing," not
"hilarious") anecdote: i didn't hear about this when it
happened.

February 7, 1995 - House Republicans Vote Down Fourth
Amendment

Once again, here I go including something not strictly Newt.
Gingrich is however the leader of the House Republicans so
... During the debate today over the House Republicans' bill
about the Exclusionary Rule, the House Black Caucus
introduced an amendment to the bill that the Republicans
promptly voted down. The amendment turned out to be the
Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, verbatim. The House
Republicans were "chagrined." The vote was 303-121, meaning
that a number of Democrats joined the Republicans.


Here's the Fourth Amendment:

Amendment Article 4

Right of Search and Seizure Regulated.

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.


Hard to believe they didn't recognize the language. I hope
they were all thouroughly embarrassed.

Dan

-----
forwarded by Wayne Draznin

I'm the one who changed the "@" to "_at_" in the above email address just in case it's still good. Anyway, so I thought that was pretty interesting, but the trail basically goes cold with the above email. I've found exact duplicates of the email here, here, here, and here. Just for fun, I'm going to try and reach this Wayne Draznin guy and ask him about this. More on this as I learn it!

UPDATE:
Ah, shit--Draznin is dead. He died of cancer back in 2001. I'm pretty sure this is the right one since he was in Cleveland and so was his email address. I found this page which talks about a memorial art show for him, including some of the works he created while dying of cancer.

Oh well... maybe somone will do a search and stumble across this post and clue us all in.