[John Lenin]

The whole thought that drug sniffing dogs are loss of freedom is a, a, pipedream. If you are not a butthead you usually doen't get busted for petty drug use, they pick out idiots and rightly so.

[Dead Corpse]

And if you KNOW you are innocent and get a bit uppity with the officer a little vial of rock cocaine may just be found in your vehicle.

Try and tell us that never happens...

[TKDietz]

"If you are not a butthead you usually doen't get busted for petty drug use, they pick out idiots and rightly so."

Who is an "idiot" is a subjective question. The idiots that are more likely to get busted are often "idiots" simply because they are minorities and/or poor people and/or people who have different hairdo's or different clothes. If you live in places like where I live I guess you are an idiot if you happen be driving on the interstate with a rental car or a vehicle with Arizona, New Mexico, or California tags, because any of those things makes you much more likely to be pulled over and searched. I suppose if you are not in the "idiot" class, everything is fine. You might have a different opinion if the law for some reason decided you were one of those in the "idiot" class.

[WoofDog123]

I think the concern here some posters have is of the phenomenom of incrementalism.

The general idea is that once goverment gets a new power/ability/legally admissible tool, it builds on it. It usually starts with something no one disagrees with (child abusers, drunk drivers, 'the children'), expands some to something fairly easy to get legal cover for (drugs), but then at some opportunity in the future, under a future administration (can you imagine an HRC admin, or a kerry admin putting 3 justices on the court, etc.), something many defenders of this ruling here would never support today suddenly gets slipped in.

Forfeiture laws are another good example...now that they are apparently 'constitutional' for some crimes, it is just a matter of interpretation under the right court to expand them. I think it is pretty clear that if they are OK for some crimes, there is no clear legal reason for them not to be OK for any felony if congress wants to go that route.