A damned fine question, Mr. Sullum!

A damned fine question, Mr. Sullum!  Jacob Sullum, writing at Reason, asks:

Was the Dog-Authorized Exploration of David Eckert's Guts Legal?
A bizarre search illustrates how the war on drugs has undermined our civil liberties.

How is it possible that a motorist pulled over for a rolling stop could end up being forcibly subjected to two X-rays, two digital probes of his anus, three enemas, and a colonoscopy, none of which discovered the slightest trace of the drugs that police claim to have thought he was hiding inside himself? That is the question raised by a federal lawsuit that recently received wide attention after it was highlighted by KOB, the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque.

The answer says a lot about the outrageous indignities we have come to tolerate in the name of the war on drugs, which has undermined our civil liberties to the point that what happened to David Eckert after he was stopped in Deming, New Mexico, seemed perfectly justified to the cops who detained him, the prosecutor who approved their application for a search warrant, the judge who granted it, and the doctors who helped execute it. Even in retrospect, Deming Police Chief Brandon Gigante insists that "we follow the law in every aspect." The really horrifying thing about Eckert's ordeal is that the courts might agree with Gigante.

It's a must-read, and yet another reason for us to put an end to the moronic “war on drugs”...