Dave gets his kicks from naked ten-year old chicks

During the summer, Dave wrote a piece that defended Judge John Roberts’ decision that constitutionally upheld Washington D.C.’s Metro police decision to search, hand-cuff, and put into a paddy wagon a 12-year old girl who ate an illegal French fry in a subway station. After writing last month that Dubya had the right to choose any nominee he wants, now that Harriet Miers has been refused an up-and-down vote by the Republican-run Senate- why do these obstructionists insist on not giving Bush’s nominees a vote?- Dave defends in his Sunday, November 20 column Judge Samuel Alito’s decision to uphold the strip search of a ten-year old girl in Pennsylvania.

That’s Dave for you. Attempting to take a high-road “moral values” stance while insisting that, yes, indeed, the framers of our Constitution wouldn’t bat an eye of such an intrusive police-state actions as the strip-search of a ten-year old girl.

Dave attempts to discredit an anti-Alito ad from “something” called the Coalition for a Fair & Independent Judiciary. (I may not be sure, Dave, but this “something” sounds like a coalition that promotes a fair and independent judiciary. And you know they’re biased when they use words like “fair” and “independent.”) Dave calls this ad a “Borker”- a reference to Judge Robert Bork, a failed Supreme Court in the 1980s. To “bork” is to “destroy a judicial nominee through a concerted attack on his character, background and philosophy" and, to Dave, the Coalition for a Fair & Independent Judiciary are taking the low road in making an ad that focuses on Judge Alito upholding the strip-search of a ten-year old girl.

But, the problem is, Dave admits that “technically, Alito did vote ‘to approve the strip search of a 10-year old girl.’” The only conclusion one can make is that Dave is wasting- again- precious space in The Oregonian that could better be utilized by an ad for Marion’s Carpet Warehouse or something.

But, Dave continues on with his specious argument. You see, the girl in question was the daughter of a drug-dealer. And, in Samuel Alito’s opinion, they are not covered by the U.S. Constitution. And Dave concurs.

The issue at hand is not the psychological trauma and scarring that this girl will have to deal with the rest of her life. The issue at hand is if the search warrant was legally issued, and the “scope of search authorized by the warrant”, a quote provided by Judge Michael Chertoff, current homeland security director.

Judge Alito found a “commonsense and realistic” reading of the search warrant, and found a Supreme Court precedent that required just such a reading. This reading was contained in the warrant’s language that “the magistrate intended to authorize a search of all occupants of the premises.”

So far Dave hasn’t quieted any concerns that a possible Supreme Court Justice Alito would seek to limit the over-zealousness of an out-of-control state apparatus with callous disregard for American citizens’ privacy in an attempt to build a criminal case against them. Dave neglects to discuss the warrant in question, simply Alito’s interpretation of it. For all we know, Alito may just be reading into the warrant what he needed to create a legal argument in favor of Officer Groody, who may have just been a sick pervert who got his kicks from naked ten-year old girls. Considering that Judge Alito’s opinion didn’t match that of the court’s majority opinion, it appears what Dave is describing as a flagrant and obvious case of legislating from the bench- you know, your standard conservative’s pet peeve.

Dave cites the dean of Lewis and Clark’s Law School, Jim Huffman, who says that Judge Alito is committed to the “precedent and principle of stare decisis.” However, your typical newspaper reader isn’t going to be familiar with legal terms or read Latin. For all we know, stare decisis may simply mean a “decisive stare”, a legalese way of saying that Alito likes to give his opponents the “evil eye.”

Dave tries to conclude with the reasoning that officers needed, in the midst and haste of an investigation, to search those in the house, as drug dealers may give contraband or evidence to them in hopes to those persons will not be searched. Regardless of the actual scope (not after-the-fact interpretation) of the search warrant, and regardless of what kind of effects strip-searches may have on ten-year old girls.

So, freedom of speech expressed by adults for adults in the ways of stripping and live sex shows should be constitutionally banned. But strip-searches of ten-year old girls? That’s fine and dandy. Such is the bizzaro world that conservatives live in….