A sensible question:

Dear Jonah:
Having now read both sides of your little tiff with Glenn Greenwald, I’m looking for some clarification. Specifically, where you see the boundaries of your ‘eminently reasonable’ police procedures.
You believe that the police were operating in good faith — i.e. since its a known fact that drug dealers use children to hide and move drugs, searching the child made perfect sense under the circumstances.
So what are the limits? Children tend to travel in packs given half a chance — as I’m sure you know, or will know, being a father yourself. What if there had been more than one child in the room? What if the daughter had her little friend from next door over to play that day. There’s as much reason to suppose the drug dealer would hide the drugs on the neighbors kid as on his own child. Could the police also search the neighbors child?
And, since we all know the drug problem is as much a suburban scourge as an inner city one, what if this search took place in Chevy Chase, and not the ‘hood. And the neighbors kid happened to be your daughter. Would the police be justified then? And would you have any sympathy for the child — or her parents?
This is not intended to be a “gotcha” email. I’m really very curious whether or not you’ve completely thought thru the implications of your position. Because, given how completely pervasive drugs are in todays society, the scenario I posit is completely within the realm of possibility.

Me: I think we’re getting very far afield, largely because Greenwald decided to use my post as a springboard for a paranoid rant. Look: I was using as my factual example the actual case of Doe v. Groody. The girl was “strip searched” — quotation marks necessary because it wasn’t quite the shakedown some associate with strip searches — because the police believed the warrant covered what they were doing. In other words: They already got a warrant. The debate was over whether or not the warrant was broad enough. That’s a perfectly fine debate to have and I’m open to the possibility that Alito was wrong on the merits. And I absolutely believe the police should have a warrant before they search people under such circumstances. How anyone could think I don’t believe that is sort of beyond me. Regarldess, the idea that dictatorship hangs in the balance is batty and the product of Greenwald’s imagination.

Indeed, my point in the original post was not a legal argument, which I think is clear to any fair-minded reader. It was a moral point. The cops acted in good faith. The judge acted in good faith. The parents were drug dealers who subjected their kid to this. Is it really so hard to see where the villain is?

As for drawing the line. I think all children, white and black, rich and poor, should be eligible for strip searches if the police can persuade a judge that there is enough probable cause to justify a warrant. If kids are immune from searches, drug dealers will use kids to hide drugs. This is already a common practice, I’m told, because drug dealers hope that the warrant doesn’t include their kids. I see no reason to enshrine that practice as a constitutional right. And I flatly don’t see what is so complicated or controversial about any of this.