Friday, January 13, 2006

Fun with Jonah

Glenn Greenwald has some fun with WATB Jonah Goldberg, who promptly throws a temper tantrum.

One thing Greenwald leaves off is that while Goldberg wrote this:

STRIP SEARCHES [Jonah Goldberg]

I understand the need for following the procedural niceties, but as a plain moral common sense issue, if you are a drug dealer and keep drugs on the premises with your child, you get zero-point-zero sympathy from me if your kids are searched, warrant or no. It may be wrong for the cops to do it. But you are not a victim for choosing a life where you can rationally expect to expose your kids to far greater risks than a search by a polite cop. The kid's a victim -- of bad parents.


In the tantrum Goldberg adds:

the real outrage is when drug dealers ensnare or otherwise put at risk their own children in order to sell drugs.


True, I suppose it's quite outrageous when drug dealers do such things. But that didn't, you know, happen in this case which is why we require warrants for such things. It's why probable cause matters. It's why Jonah needs to go back to 3rd grade civics so that he understands that we're not a country of collective guilt and the fact that some bad guy somewhere stashed drugs on his kids does not mean we should grant agents of the state the right to strip search all kids, include Jonah's own offspring, without warrants. Searching the premises, under someone's bed, is not the same as lifting up a little girl's skirt.

What country do these people want to live in? Jeebus. What the hell were we supposed tbe fighting the Cold War about again?