Did I Mention Complicit Judges?

I'm sure I must have, in the context of police misbehavior that gets less than a slap on the wrist. Here's a sterling case in point:

U.S. District Court Judge John W. Lungstrum dismissed every one of the Hartes’s claims. Lungstrum found that sending a SWAT team into a home first thing in the morning based on no more than a positive field test and spotting a suspect at a gardening store was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. He found that the police had probable cause for the search, and that the way the search was conducted did not constitute excessive force. He found that the Hartes had not been defamed by the raid or by the publicity surrounding it. He also ruled that the police were under no obligation to know that drug testing field kits are inaccurate, nor were they obligated to wait for the more accurate lab tests before conducting the SWAT raid. The only way they’d have a claim would be if they could show that the police lied about the results, deliberately manipulated the tests or showed a reckless disregard for the truth — and he ruled that the Hartes had failed to do so.

Read the whole story, if you haven't run across it someplace yet, but keep in mind that 1) shopping in a garden center makes you a suspect for drug-related offenses; 2) the field test kits used in this case return a 70% false positive rate; and 3) your 4th Amendment rights are worthless.

Read the whole thing.