The reason I thought you were joking is that I was talking about police officers in general, while they are investigating crimes and the fact that they probably shouldn't be following their ex-girlfriends around doesn't really have anything to do with the point I was making. I don't know how much a TRO is worth against a cop because I've never tried to enforce one. Maybe you can tell me, because it seems like you have an unnatural interest in the subject.

I don't disagree with anything you said. However, if I was trying to overturn an established Supreme Court precedent, I'd try to find a more sympathetic plaintiff than Montanan gun owners. I just don't see any Supreme Court ruling a huge amount of federal law unconstitutional so people in Montana can have more guns. As I said before, if there is some sort of 2nd Amendment reasoning that would make this cause of action more likely to prevail, I'd love to hear it.

HA! Good luck getting the Supreme Court to overturn Wickard v. Filburn(1942). In that case the Supreme Court held it could regulate what a guy did with wheat he grew on his own land to consume on his own land because it affected interstate commerce(maybe indirectly affecting the price of wheat for example). Maybe they could work in a second amendment angle, but I don't think it is going to fly. Would love to hear someone else's opinion.

I think that is correct, although I think it is very rare to have a piece of evidence suppressed due to police misconduct. For starters, most people just plead guilty. Also, it is very easy to get a warrant, and very hard to get a warrant invalidated. Also, there are a lot of exceptions to every rule. As a friend of mine once said, "If you can't get a piece of evidence admitted, you're not trying hard enough."

I hope you're joking, but in case you aren't, it would depend whether he was investigating her and whether there was a restraining order against him.

2-Sorry, I thought we were talking about what was legal and what wasn't. Have fun shooting trespassers. 3-Oh sorry, when you said seek charges, I thought you meant seek charges with a chance that they would be enforced by a court. If you are seeking charges against an officer who is investigating you, the would be unlikely.

The part that I found fault with was the following: Throwing out the conviction is the only punishment that will work to deter abuses, because it is the only punishment that takes away the reward for illegal searches.

Distinguishing between removing an incentive and creating a disincentive is slicing the baloney a little thin. Look at it like this. If a cop makes 10 illegal searches, maybe one will be questioned in court(most of these people plead guilty). If the guy has a really good attorney, his conviction might get overturned. The cop has 9 searches where he received a gain and one where he did not. He is then free to play again. Only by punishing him by more than having the evidence suppressed in one case will there be a disincentive to keep going.

If they were all striving to be heroes, and got caught every time they messed up that might work, but it assumes that the officer is striving for some sort of non-job-related reward. Being praised for being a hero for catching a serial killer or something like that. Doesn't really happen too often in real life. In real life, they might get some notice in the department for an additional arrest. Taking away that reward by punishing them for illegal searches would be a far more effective punishment than withholding the evidence, and has the added benefit of not allowing an undoubted criminal out of jail on a technicality. It would also have the benefit of removing dirty cops from the police force rather than just having the evidence suppressed when they get caught.

While this solution solves the problem of the cop who is willing to risk any sort of punishment to catch a serial killer problem, it doesn't remedy the everyday problem of people's rights being infringed

There are a million ways to get a warrant with little evidence. The only reason they didn't have one in this case is they probably didn't know they needed it(3 judges agreed with them).

You are arguing that having evidence thrown out is a greater deterrent to a police officer than the loss of his job? I could not disagree more. The end result in this case is that a guilty burglar had to appeal to the highest case in the state before the evidence was thrown out. The officer probably doesn't give a rat's ass that the evidence was suppressed. I don't think we should punish the officers for making good faith judgments about legal gray areas, but if we did, I think it would be a far greater deterrent than the occasional suppression of evidence.

Can't say that I agree with the bit about bad cops. As shown by the circuit split(not to mention the split opinion in NY), this is a legal gray area. If legal scholars disagree as to whether or not this is constitutional, you can't really fault the detective.

2-Not at all true. There are a bunch of ways a detective can legally follow you on to private property. They also don't need to be following you due to the open fields doctrine. 3-Oh really? How is a detective supposed to get the probable cause required for a warrant without being allowed to follow people? I bet you also think they need warrants to frisk people.

You are making the incorrect assumption that profit necessarily requires prediction. As I understand it, he buys cheap CDS's(Credit default swaps are cheap when the risk of failure is perceived to be low) with a small part of his portfolio and puts the rest in something safe that pays off a reliable amount of interest like T-Bills. If the market doesn't fail, he pretty much breaks even. If the market fails his swaps pay out huge. I guess in some sense you could argue that he did predict that eventually the market would have enough of a correction to make him some money, but it wasn't really a prediction so much as a strategy that he engaged in over the long term. When I think of guys who predicted the downturn, I think of guys like Paulson who crunched the numbers, bet against the housing market and profited when it crashed.

How in the hell did this get modded insightful? Two consenting parties to an exchange magically makes things legal, or just, or something? If you are allowed to make up your own rights, then you have the right to do everything, and anything that restricts that is unjust. However, when most people talk about rights, they are talking about a guarantee made to them by a government. Pick a government, any government, none of them recognize these stupid privileges you made up for yourself.

People keep saying copyright is a recent invention, and somehow assume that if we go back to a world without copyright artists will still thrive. The difference is that we now have technology which allows us to get the media instantly and free. Sure, some musicians will be able to get by with live performances. What about authors? How is an author supposed to survive in a copyright-free world once e-readers have matured?

Artists should not have to rely on the good will of the public to ensure that they are paid for their work. I cannot believe how many people on this site think it is perfectly alright to steal someone's work while complaining about parasitic middlemen, like once the record companies no longer exist, people will stop stealing music and start paying for it directly.

Had Blockbuster's total access plan where you can get 3 at a time mailed and trade in the envelopes for up to 5 dvds a month in store. Then they changed it so the dvds you rent in the store get added to the movies you have out and they don't send another one and called it "no late fees." So basically I was paying extra money to save them postage and when I called to complain they tried to tell me that it was better than what I had because there were no late fees. I told them just because you're reading this off your response tree doesn't make it true. Previously they had unlimited in-store rentals, so they've changed my plan twice since its inception.

I was so ticked off that I switched back to netflix, which I quit because of throttling and got to cash in my one month of one free extra dvd I got in the class action suit. The service has greatly improved since I left. They have way better selection than blockbuster and I sometimes use the online streaming to play things on my ps3, I just wish it was natively supported and I didn't have to pay for a program(playon) to do it. Then again, the program also supports other online video sites and I am able to stream every episode of Star Trek TOS from CBS, which is great. The only downside is that I have to pay one dollar extra per month to get access to blu ray's, but it is so much easier to get the movies I want sent that I don't mind.