The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Unfortunately its a narrow margin.

Supreme Court upholds 2nd Amendment [PDF]

NOTICE OF SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING

TIME CHANGE TO 9:00 a.m.

The hearing on “Laptop Searches and Other Violations of Privacy Faced by Americans Returning from Overseas Travel” scheduled by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution for Wednesday, June 25, 2008 in the Senate Dirksen Office Building, Room 226 will begin at 9:00 a.m. rather than the previously scheduled time of 9:30 a.m.

Chairman Feingold will preside.

United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary

The police raid in Philly caused commentators at BoingBoing to reference this incident, which I hadn't heard about before:

The police tried to remove two wood-and-steel tactical bunkers constructed by MOVE on the roof by dropping a bomb made of C-4 and Tovex. The resulting explosion caused the house to catch fire, igniting a massive blaze which eventually consumed almost an entire city block. Eleven people, including John Africa, six other adults and four children, died in the resulting fire. Mayor Wilson Goode soon appointed an investigative commission, the PSIC or MOVE commission, which issued its report on March 6, 1986. The report denounced the actions of the city government, stating that "Dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable."

And people talk about Waco... Does bombing Philly count as the most overzealous police action in U.S. history or are there others I'm not aware?

MOVE - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Four young residents of a North Philadelphia house who circulated petitions questioning police-surveillance cameras were rousted from their home Friday and detained 12 hours without charges while police searched their house.

The raid on the property on Ridge Avenue near Parrish Street was led by 9th District Police Capt. Dennis Wilson, who was quoted in an online story by the City Paper as saying of the residents: "They're a hate group. We're trying to drum up charges against them, but unfortunately we'll probably have to let them go."

He said he asked Wilson if he had a warrant, and none was produced.

Vanore said police will conduct a forensic examination of the items taken from the property to see if any charges are warranted.

Wow.

The cops came, searched and left a mess for puzzled homeowner | Philadelphia Daily News | 06/17/2008

Justice Scalia made two originalist claims about the application of the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause to hearsay evidence in his opinion for the Court in Crawford v. Washington... This article argues that neither of these claims was historically sound.

The salient feature of Justice Scalia's originalist claim... is that he offered no actual historical evidence of any such distinction.

The article concludes by sketching out the salient differences between the accusatory criminal procedure that the Framers thought they had preserved in the Bill of Rights from the investigatory criminal procedure that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and argues that the discontinuity of constitutional doctrine is so pronounced that originalism cannot provide a valid approach for deciding contemporary constitutional criminal procedure issues.

See also this:

The distance between framing-era and contemporary doctrine and institutions is so great that originalism is not a feasible approach to constitutional interpretation.

And particularly this:

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

SSRN-The Fictional Character of Law-and-Order Originalism: A Case Study of the Distortions and Evasions of Framing-Era Arrest Doctrine in Atwater V. Lago Vista by Thomas Davies

"In a free country, the government cannot have unlimited power to read, seize, and store this information without any oversight."

Congress Must Investigate Electronic Searches at U.S. Borders | Electronic Frontier Foundation

The government's position is as frightening as it is naíve. A computer is not the same thing as a briefcase. Nor, for that matter, is an iPod, a thumb drive, or a cell phone. It is both quantitatively and qualitatively different, and that makes all of the difference in this case. It seems that the government and the lower court are speaking past, and not at, each other. The government says, "We can do anything for any reason," and the court says, "No, you need reasonable suspicion to search a laptop."

A former federal prosecutor weighs in on the border search decision. (Thanks Dc0de!)

On the Border

Arnold has failed to distinguish how the search of his laptop and its electronic contents is logically any different from the suspicionless border searches of travelers’ luggage that the Supreme Court and we have allowed.

Its clear that there is a difference. The court may decide that the difference is not constitutionally significant, but it is not helpful for the court to pretend that no difference exists. This is a sort of ignorance that allows the court to reach a comfortable decision without addressing the substantive question...

My rant on today's decision.

Re: The Volokh Conspiracy - Ninth Circuit Allows Suspicionless Computer Searches at the Border:

The Ninth Circuit has (finally) handed down United States v. Arnold; the court ruled that there is no Fourth Amendment requirement of "reasonable suspicion" to search a laptop computer at the border.

This is extremely bad.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Ninth Circuit Allows Suspicionless Computer Searches at the Border:

One morning at Epcot Center, as we offered our ID to the castmember at the turnstile and began to argue (again -- they're very poorly trained on this point) that we could indeed opt to show ID instead of being printed, a small boy behind us chirped up, "No you have to be fingerprinted! Everybody has to be fingerprinted!"

To all those parents who worry that Disney will turn their kids into little princesses, it's time to get priorities straight: the "security" at the parks is even more effective at conditioning your children to live in a police state.

Everybody has to be fingerprinted!