NOW THAT'S UN-AMERICAN

The Supreme Court's ruling against random drug-hunting roadblocks upholds
our nation's long tradition of freedom from unreasonable searches.

The court properly objected to the generalized nature of the roadblocks,
which made every passerby a suspect until proven otherwise.

In a dissent, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist argued that being stopped
for no particular reason was a minor inconvenience to drivers. The question
is: Why should anyone who has not given any indication of wrongdoing be
inconvenienced at all?

Justice Rehnquist thought to balance the severity of the drug threat
against our Fourth Amendment rights. These rights are not to be weighed and
balanced on the whim of any individual or any group of individuals. They
are the bedrock of what it means to be an American, and of what the world
admires about America.

One might argue, as Justice Clarence Thomas did in dissent, that even
drunken driving roadblocks, which the Supreme Court has upheld, would have
been rejected by the Constitution's framers. Justice Thomas wrote that the
legality of the drug checkpoints followed from that of the sobriety
checkpoints.

The court did put a very fine point on it when it allowed that roadblocks
to protect the public from an "immediate, vehicle-bound threat" are
allowable, but roadblocks to protect the public from "the generalized and
ever-present possibility ... that any given motorist has committed some
crime" are not allowable.

Be that as it may, it would certainly be a bad idea to travel any farther
down that road.

Allowing police to stop people for no apparent reason opens the door to
more serious abuses of police power and to erosion of the rights the
Founding Fathers guaranteed to us two centuries ago.