They merely ruled that states may do as they please in this regard. That is, they ruled that this is not something that has federal constitutional implications and that the federal gov't should stay out of the states' business. That is conservative.

They should rule the same way on Clown Care.

Brujo, gdudewe, martinA and WG - the white Al Sharptons of NSR.

So the conservative view is that state and local governments can violate any of the Bill of Rights with impunity. 

An unreasonable search would seem to violate at least part of the federal constitution.  So I guess states can detain people without probable cause, go into your house and rifle through it looking for something without a warrant, etc...States don't need to adhere to the federal constitution when dealing with civil liberties apparently.  Hopefully the SCOTUS majority opinion wasn't so simplistic (haven't read it yet myself) but that sure seems to be the opinion in tpap land.

...

No, the ruling was that the states weren't violating the bill of rights.

Brujo, gdudewe, martinA and WG - the white Al Sharptons of NSR.

Kennedy doesn't seem to be approaching this from a states' rights view in the exchange NY Times reports here.  Frankly I find his opinion more disturbing.

So we are going to strip search everybody and maybe even raid their houses for minor infractions as a front in the "war on terror".  Strip searching McVeigh wouldn't have done anything to stop his plot unless he had his master plan hidden on his body.  So we want to strip search anyone with or without cause to stop the super devious from plotting to blow stuff up? 

The September 2001 terrorist that was stopped and ticketed for speeding?  Is Kennedy really advocating that a draconian search policy for people that have been arrested would have helped there?  We don't arrest people for speeding?  Should we, and then give them super duper searches, you know, just in case?  I'm being a bit hyperbolic but Kennedy's statements invite it.

I guess Deland PD should have taken me downtown last night and then stipped me and maybe raided my house.  I worked until almost 1AM this morning.  I was stopped at 1AM on my way home from work because my tag light was out (Who notices that a tag light is out?  A break light or turn signal you'll notice if you're remotely attentive and check your mirrors from time to time at night while breaking or signalling a turn.  I popped in a new bulb at AutoZone on my way home from work today).  As it was, the officer was exceedingly polite.  He told me that my light was out.  He ran my driver's license and quizzed me in a non-offensive way to make sure I wasn't drunking my way home from a NCAA Championship party and bid me good evening.  But I guess he should have treated me like a potential, no not potential, LIKELY Tim McVeigh.  Who the hell knows what those 99% of drivers on I4 through downtown that are going 70 in a 50 zone are planning?  If we stop them all and strip search them all we'll be on to their plans to fly planes into buildings (and I know I'm one of them devious speeders.  I try to drive close to the speed limit but I also refuse to interupt the general traffic flow on the interstate so I typically fly through downtown in the right lane 10-15mph above the posted speed but just slight slower than the mean flow, that is on the occassion that it isn't backed up.  Do you know what's more devious than McVeigh?  It's the guy that obeys ever damned regulation as tightly as possible so as to fly under the radar.  Maybe we should target the clean cut sort that come to complete stops at 4-ways and when turning right on red.  They are surely a menace.)

...

Look, I speed too. My tail lights burn out on occasion. I have no desire to get stripped searched as a result. The Court, however, didn't rule that cops can strip search you if the stop you for a traffic violation. They can do that only if they arrest you and throw you into a jail. I don't see anything particularly wrong with that. But, if enough other people do, they can can get the law changed in Florida to prevent strip searches.

Brujo, gdudewe, martinA and WG - the white Al Sharptons of NSR.

But Kennedy said.

Obviously these people must necessarily be arrested and searched.

Your opinion (and that of 5 SCOTUS justices I guess) then seems to be that once you are arrested, regardless of the reason, that no search is an unreasonable search.  Thus state and local governments can ignore the 4th Amendment as long as they arrest you first.

...

If the cop can't see your tag, you get stopped, especially late at night.

"The problems we face today exist because the People who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for their living."

Why is it that the libs refuse to accept the reality that the Supreme Court does one thing, and one thing only: It rules on whether the law, as written and/or applied, is constitutional.

It does not rule on the touchy-feel nuances of what makes Andy angry or Mary mad, or whether the social implication is good or bad for the disadvantaged; it only concerns itself with the contritutionality of the law. Period. 

Does the Constitution allow for this, disallow for that, or come across as too vague to allow for a YES or NO decision? If a law contravenes the Constrituion, it is deemed unconsitutional; if it complies with the constitution, it is upheld. 

Really, how much simpler can things be?

Footnote: When the day comes that a former college law LECTURER --not a professor, but a LECTURER who spoke before a freshman class of law students about Constitutional law-- can dictate to the U.S. Supreme Court Justices what the Constitution means or doesn't mean, what it is or isn't, then, folks, our Republic is nothing more than a shell overseen by a dictator. 

Mr. Irony makes yet another appearance.  

Yeah, they ruled that stip and cavity searches without probable cause did not constitute an unreasonable search.  They made that ruling, at least in part, based on arguments that some people that had done really bad stuff had at some point been arrested or even just ticketed (in the case of Kennedy's 9/11 terrorist example) for minor infractions before doing said really bad stuff.  Therefore it is reasonable to treat ALL detainees as a serious danger irrespective of reasonable suspicion to do so.  I don't think that should sit well with the wing of the GOP that pretends to be freedom loving of a libertarian leaning tea party stripe.

...

America is how old? And there have been how many decisions upholding or overturning laws passed by Congress? And of those laws so handled, there have been how many with detractors on one side and supporters on the other, long after the SCOTUS handed down its ruling? 

Now, tell us, long years after decisions both popular and unpopular were reached, has this great nation's system of law ever faltered, ever failed its citizens, because of what the SCOTUS did? 

Even the Dred Scott v Sandford case, wherein the SCOTUS ruled 7-2 against Scotts claim of citizenship, was eventually made moot by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. 

The law *must* be periodically tested by either challenge or affirmation. There can be no finer, no more exacting, test than that of its constitutionality. As far as our Republic is concerned, no body of our government is more eminently --nay, constitutionally-- designed and designated than the U.S. Supreme Court.

You may wish to visit this site to learn more about the role of the government, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court.

^^^^windbag alert

"The Republican Party of Eisenhower and Rockefeller has vanished, and in its place has come a hard-right, anti-government, socially conservative, economically extreme-liberal party that somehow manages to convey a combination of callousness and nastiness almost as a matter of pride."

The U.S. Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.  The supposed strict Constitutional constructionalists and founding father worshippers used to just read the law and apply it.  Now they have no problem telling you what it means instead of what it actually says and this represents a shift (and a failure) from the so called conservative interpretation of the Constitution. 

Tpap, you may generalize as to how this specific holding limits allows people in jails to be searched, but be honest and at least recognize that this individual was stripped searched on a cleared warrant for a failure to pay a fine that should have been cleared.  He should not have been searched, it used to be wrong to hide behind an updated computer and before this ruling you had to have a compelling justification to subject someone to the humiliation of a full jail entry and search.  Not anymore.  The conservatives are pretty liberal in their interpretation on this one.   

"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

Actually they are behaving in a way has been typical of the GOP Conservatives for quite a long time.

For all their rhetoric about freedom, conservatives often like laws that establish religion, restrict free speech, promote police power over 4th Amendment rights, deny equal protection under the law, etc...  These laws get struck down and they howl about "Activist Judges subverting the will of the people and states' rights".  They have done this on a whole myriad of cases from Loving V Virginia and Brown V Board of Ed to Dover V Kitzmiller.  Had the court found in favor of the plaintiff in the unreasonable search case, Tahoe et al. would be crying about "activist judges walking all over states' rights (see tpap justfying this ruling on states' rights grounds)".   Conservatives tend to think that the Bill of Rights restricts only Congress. 

...