Did anyone else hear the tail end of Talk of the Nation today? They had a reporter on who outed a fake federal agent who went around the town of Gerald, MO, with police blessing, busting into houses of "suspected drug dealers" without any kind of warrant, arresting people at gunpoint and dragging them onto their lawns, demanding that they name names. He would say "I'm a federal agent, that's all you need to know. I don't need a warrant."
Link to story (audio available after 6pm): Getting the Story: Reporter Outs Fake Fed
Aside from the many, many troubling local issues involved, one point was brought up that troubled me deeply: People didn't question the assertion that he didn't require a warrant. The reporter said that people were saying "well, we know they can tap our phones now, so maybe they don't need a warrant either."
It should trouble us all that we've come to the point where warrantless searches and seizures are seen as plausible and even acceptable.
Update: AP story
I'd link to the newspaper's website, the Gasconade County Republican as well, but it appears to have gone down; they probably blew past a bandwidth limit.