Forget about what's up Savana Redding's ass, what's up Clarence Thomas's?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/25/savana-redding-strip-sear_n_220717.html
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Thursday school officials acted illegally when they strip-searched an Arizona teenage girl looking for prescription-strength ibuprofen.
In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches when ordered Savana Redding to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear.
Redding was 13 when Safford Middle School officials in rural eastern Arizona conducted the search. They were looking for pills - the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.
See this is why I support the full legalization of all drugs. If only the administration had permitted Advils in the school medicine cabinet, they wouldn't have to perform a body search on a student to relieve their headaches. InstantRimshot.com
A 1985 Supreme Court decision that dealt with searching a student's purse has found that school officials need only reasonable suspicions, not probable cause. But the court also warned against a search that is "excessively intrusive."
[....]
"The court's decision sends a clear signal to school officials that they can strip search students only in the most extraordinary situations," added her lawyer, Adam Wolf of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation.
Yeah, like when there is credible reason to suspect that a girl is hiding a tactical nuke in her vagina or that a guy is hiding WMD's or a machine gun in his rectum--but never strip search for ibuprofen, no matter how many. Right? Riiiight?
In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas found the search legal and said the court previously had given school officials "considerable leeway" under the Fourth Amendment in school settings.
Officials had searched the girl's backpack and found nothing, Thomas said. "It was eminently reasonable to conclude the backpack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in a place she thought no one would look," Thomas said.
Or maybe to conclude that the backpack was empty because she didn't have any pills? Even if there's a fifty-fifty chance here, what's the doomsday scenario with stuff that any teenager could buy after school in any supermarket?
If only we had Clarence looking for the WMD's in Iraq, we might have found them. At the least, we could reasonably have concluded that the WMD's weren't in Saddam's palaces or his munitions arsenals because Saddam was secreting the WMD's where he thought the US wouldn't look.
That said, we've now created a huge problem for law enforcement. Now that students know that their crotches are safe, look for the next Columbine-style killer teen to pull a Timothy McVeigh with a ton of fertilizer and turpentine up his ass.
OK, so my comments are lame. They're funnier, though, if you read them in Jon Stewart's voice, with the inflections and grimaces and all.
Have a nice day,
:-)