The Republicans apparently don't like the First Amendment, so they are going to "fix" it with a flag burning amendment: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/15/flag.amendment.ap/index.html

They (lead by the great Republican Antonin Scalia) also don't think much of the Fourth Amendment: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR2006061500730.html

On both issues, the Republicans have taken what I consider to be an anti-American position.

Scalia, with all due respect, is full of poop with his "originalism" schtick. His opinions have as many value judgments and public policy pronouncements as anyone else's. He's just too arrogant to realize it.

The following piece from the admittedly left wing www.washingtonmonthly.com is exactly right:

KNOCK AND ANNOUNCE....Southern California Edison has graciously decided to restore electrical power to my home, and upon rebooting my PC I note that the Supreme Court has decided to eviscerate the Bill of Rights a bit further today. In today's ruling in Hudson v. Michigan they decided that even if police violate the "knock and announce" rule for serving search warrants, they can still use the evidence they seize in court. Kieran Healy comments:

"By the by, Scalia, writing for the majority, is happy to set his originalism aside and argue that the growth of “public-interest law firms and lawyers who specialize in civil-rights grievances ... [and] the increasing professionalism of police forces, including a new emphasis on internal police discipline ... [and] the increasing use of various forms of citizen review can enhance police accountability” all mean that the fourth amendment can be reinterpreted."

This is, of course, why I decline to take originalism seriously. Even its proponents pretty obviously understand that it's ridiculous to pretend that nothing has changed in the past 200 years, and they mostly use originalism as little more than intellectual cover for making the conservative rulings they want to make anyway. But when conservative rulings require that originalism be tossed overboard, they do so without apology. Some doctrine, eh?