Pict wrote:


They specifically said that you will get you for anything illegal, not just what they are looking for.

-john

I've only ever met one search dog in a professional capacity.

High school, they got sick of the pot on campus. So, the state cops show up at 730 and walk the dog. It walks right past the biggest dealer in school, and sniffs some poor girl's bag. She's a preacher's kid, I swear that if baptists had nuns she would be one, and she total freaks out, crying and begging and praying. It had twigged to her tuna fish sandwish.

The dog sniffed me, to, but I was chewing on a slim jim openly. Sniffed everyone with lunch in thier bag, or eating breakfast. Missed every pot head.

Search dogs, BAH!

Even if they can get enough dogs, it is a matter of body packing to get around it. Body packing gets around drug dogs, should work for bomb dogs.

I don't like what they do here in Ohio at public schools with their random checks -- they also walk the dogs through the parking lot and they say they are doing it so the dogs will 'hit' on weapons, drugs or anything they think is contraband -- if the dog jumps up on the car, it is searched. We are fast becoming a police state.

I like how Journeyman put it, that if the dog says search than you get searched. Only one problem with that.... there are thousands of different kinds of explosives and most dogs can only be trained to ?hit? on 5 to 8.
Second, I know the media loves to pump up the idea that racial profiling is illegal, but it is not. That is it is not illegal when used with other reasons and not just race (i.e. actions, clothing, behavior, location, time of year, etc. )
I want to know since when does random mean anyone with a foreign passport? That may be true in your experience, but how come we keep seeing the 80 year old ladies being searched on the news?
O and not liking searches without reasonable suspicion, well not even the courts can agree on what that means (especially the 9th circuit court) so I?m not going to bother.
Wow the cameras help? If they help how come they have been getting blown up lately?
I love Susan?s thinking about the terrorist?s giving the package to someone. But the problem with that thinking is that isn?t how they act. As it is well documented they want to die for their ?religious cause? to get their ?heavenly rewards?.
I may sound like I am a anti rights - pro government, but I?m actually the opposite. I am very much for minimalist government. But being a governor, mayor, president, senator, etc., is kinda like being a police officer or even kinda like being in the military. It doesn?t matter what they do, there is always someone in the public on the news whining and crying about not liking what they are doing. If the politicians let things go along as normal without ?random searches? or some other means to try to stop an attack and something was to happen, they would be crucified. But now they are tying to avoid a incident and they are still being crucified.
I have always had the mentality that if you don?t like what is happening, don?t whine, come up with a better idea on how it should be done and make it happen.
But because our country is full of a bunch of OVERLY SENSITIVE, EASILY OFFENDED, people that somehow constantly get air time on the news, nothing that is ?truly effective? will ever be done.
WOW sorry about the rant, guess I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. <img src="/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

I must admit, that I'm getting worried about these recent events. I saw president Bush talking about the free world and democracy.... Now I found out that a guy in the UK was held down by 2 police officers... the third officer shot 5 bullets in the guy... Now it has come out thay he had nothing to do with the bombs overthere. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> If this continu's it looks like the terrorists are getting what they want. <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Personally, I think it would be a fine thing if national security in the USA were turned over to the ACLU. I think they would do a bang-up job preventing bus bombs.

Regards, Vince

Actually, they are in charge of our security since we are prohibited from profiling the very people who set these bombs off.

The ACLU only protects the parts of the Constitution that it wants to protect, not the whole thing. Have you noticed that they won't touch the "illegal search & seizure" parts with a ten-foot barge pole? Why? Because "we don't deal with property".

Sue

Re "Search dogs, BAH!"

You may have run across a less than talented or motivated dog.

I knew another one that had an amazing nose, and I saw him both in training and in action. In some of the training scenarios, the cops let me choose the hiding place while the dog and handler were in another part of the building. Dog found the ganja in nothing flat.

Sadly, this was a very happy, good-natured Belgian malinois that died from bone cancer at a ridiculously young age.

Dogs are lot like people: They're individuals. Some are brilliant and some are duds.

But a dog with a good nose and desire and with love and respect for the handler is something to see in action.

RE. Kelo I found O'Connor's dissent far more eloquent [Dear all: Helen and I are talking about the recent US Supreme Court decision in which the Court found it perfectly OK to condemn private property in the name of public use and sell it to a priovate developer in the name of urban renewal. See: ]http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/supct...04-108.ZS.html] although Thomas' law clerk wrote a wonderful dissertation on the history of the "publicf takings" clause of AM 5.

I have never had as much heartburn with so-called profiling as I am supposed to have. In context, I have to agree with police friends (I really do have a few) because if you are looking for a brown guy carrying a pack, it really makes perfectly good sense to stop all the brown guys carrying packs. Unless, of course, you are the brown guy carrying the pack full of camping gear.

I am much more distrustful of the 'random' search - as you point out, there is always a way, and nothing is 'random.'