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The NYT on the Dog Sniff Case

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There is one constant in journalism, as constant as the North Star always being north -- the main editorial page of the New York Times will always muck it up.  Today they have this editorial on the dog sniff case, Florida v. Jardines.

The Supreme Court correctly ruled this week that using a drug-sniffing police dog on a suspect's property without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches. The ruling was not surprising; the split among the justices was.
Why are they surprised?  Because they commit the rookie error of labeling the justices "liberal" or "conservative" and expecting them to vote in accordance with those one-dimensional labels every time:

The majority included conservative Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and three of the court's more liberal members (Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan). The four dissenting justices were: Samuel Alito Jr., Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., all on the conservative side; and Stephen Breyer, a moderate liberal.
Everyone with a modicum of sense and any experience at all watching the Supreme Court knows its not that simple.  I explained it in this post on Jardines.

A newspaper that has the conceit to consider itself the nation's premier paper should be able and willing to hire some more sophisticated thinkers for its editorial page.

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