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The government can’t force you to get health insurance…but can check to see if you’re hiding narcotics in your ass if you make an illegal u-turn.

Can’t tell if the supreme court wants a limited gov’t or not.

theatlantic:

Why the Supreme Court Thinks Strip Searches Are Constitutional

Only a few days after conferring on health care, the judges issued their opinion on Florence, 5-4 allowing detention officers to strip-search for minor violations such as traffic stops and failing to leash a dog. Justice Kennedy authored the majority opinion (Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito — broadly considered to be the conservative wing — joined in the decision). A broccoli mandate? Not in my America. Jay walking? Drop those trousers.

The proximity of the two cases only underscores the apparent contradiction in logic. In a telephone conversation, University of Chicago Political Science Chair and Law Professor Bernard Harcourt addressed the inconsistency head on. “I think it is totally coherent in its paradoxical way — but goes to the difference between economic and political liberty.”

Harcourt, who is the author of The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order, calls it the “Great American Paradox” — a constitutional duality dating back to the 18th century, in which “they actually believed that you didn’t need a legislative branch, you only needed an executive branch. Because in economics, any man-made law would actually get in the way of natural order … because there was natural law — the markets — that already governed people.” In turn, lawmakers hypothesized, “There was only one thing we need legislation for. And that was criminal law. And you see it today.”

Read more. [Image: Shutterstock]