Thursday, November 10, 2005

Softening of Patriot Act Support A good article at Reason by David Weigel: When Patriots Dissent -- Surprise: Standing up to the PATRIOT Act can be good politics. The article gives a nice background of the erosion of support for the Patriot Act, and while the drug war isn't mentioned, it's relevant. The Patriot Act was touted as a way to apply drug warrior tactics to terrorism, and then, behold, the new provisions were often primarily used to give drug warriors more weapons to use against Americans' rights. 11:02:47 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Can your spouse invite the cops in over your objection? Thanks to Daksya -- Check out this excellent re-cap by Dahlia Lithwick of the Supreme Court's oral arguments on Georgia v. Randolph. You can get a real sense of what mattered (particularly in 4th amendment terms) to the different Justices (and it doesn't look good with our new Chief Justice). I agree with Dahlia's conclusion: To my mind, this is not a hard case -- and for the same reason O'Connor keeps hammering at this morning. Of course I accept that my expectation of privacy in my home was somewhat diminished the day I married my husband. But his "right" to invite the cops to search my underwear drawer can't possibly be as forceful as my constitutionally enshrined right to keep them out. Not when there are a dozen other ways for them to rummage around if the situation demands it. Georgia's view of this case -- and apparently the view of the new chief justice -- seems to be that a few underwear searches is a small price to pay for the joy of not living alone. Here's my earlier post on the subject. 12:24:40 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []