Another aspect of the Fourth Amendment that's been slipping away from us is the idea that the police can't just go breaking down your door without probable cause and then justify it later by saying, well, we did find out that you had a couple of ounces of dope in your place. Because how do we know that the cops don't always carry a couple of ounces of dope to plant just in case they can't find something else to get you on? Even in the most civilized countries, the cops are known to be available to harass people who annoy those in power. Thus we have the requirement that the authorities must have warrants "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." You can't just drop in and look around for something. As Adam Liptak notes, America has been unique in placing importance on the exclusionary rule, but with more and more right-wing judges on the bench, there have been more convictions based on evidence that is clearly the fruit of the poisonous tree - and we now have a Supreme Court that just might think that's a good idea.

Rorschach says: "Doctors are now required to lie to their patients in South Dakota (as if having only one clinic in the state weren't insult enough)" about abortion. And he says the Indy advises that in the Guantanamo cases, it may be Muslim foreigners in the dock, but it's America that's on trial.

A new Harris poll shows Obama leading McSame by nine points among registered voters, but: "Regina Corso, Director of The Harris Poll, said, 'Senator Obama's lead seems solid, but there are some troubling spots to watch for in his campaign. First, Matures are solidly behind John McCain, and this is a group that goes out and votes in the strongest numbers among all age groups. Further, the divide among married women is also extremely close. With almost one-quarter of this group (22%) undecided, the candidate that can win the lion's share of those undecided Americans can move these overall numbers.'" This should not be the case, given McCain's affection for Social Security privatization - but Obama, for some odd reason, has not chosen to press this issue. Gosh, I sure hope this guy isn't going to be so worried about offending far-right Tories that he forgets to campaign on Democrats' strengths.

Jesse has figured out the cause of the mysteries of Obama's birth certificate. I remember the first time I went to whoever-keeps-those-records in Maryland to get a copy of my birth certificate, and they gave me an actual copy of their copy of the original document. I also remember the second time I did that and being shocked to receive some ugly thing that resulted from someone's decision to put it all on microfiche. And they may have changed it again since then, and today for all I know they just give you a printout of your data. Because at some time in the '70s it was all the rage to get rid of those original documents and compress everything. So it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that Obama acquired something from the official sources that looks nothing like the document that was originally issued at the time of his birth, which makes the whole right-wing fetishizing of the kerning entirely moot.

A short movie of Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat." (Honestly, the original is short enough that I think they could have left those last few sentences in.)