(an12070) It is rarely to one's advantage to "assist the police." In fact in British English the sentence "Fred C. Schwartz is assisting the police in their investigation" means that Fred C. Schwartz is the prime suspect. (Trivia contest for ex right wing nuts - Who was Fred C. Schwartz?) My search warrant story need not use penet.fi. In the early 80's I was residing in a rented house in a city located in a region of the country that was once Democratic Farm Labor Party territory. Being an inveterate reader of the newspaper, I was one day surprised to discover that our house was to be searched by the authorities at some point in the next few weeks. Specifically, the article said that the houses on <my> block of <my> street were going to be searched as part of a survey to determine how many had illegal basement drains. Apparently the criminals who had constructed much of the housing in that neighborhood in the 1920s had connected basement drains to the *storm sewers* from whence who knows what hideous substances could drain into the navigable waters of the United States without undergoing tertiary, secondary, or even primary treatment. What's more, they had not complied with the Water Quality Act of 1970, as amended. Who could believe that such evil exists in the human heart. My wife (who in many ways was just the sort of female Kipling had in mind when he penned 'Deadlier Than the Male') and I decided to resist this search. Since I was away during the day, it would fall to here to deal with the authorities. In due course, a sewer inspector rang our doorbell. My wife demanded to see his warrant. He was shocked and mortified. He tried to talk her into allowing the search. He used primate arguments like "everyone else is letting us in." My wife used Northern European arguments like "I'm not everyone else." He went away. Over the next few weeks, various bureaucrats called my wife and tried to get her to change her mind. They said, "You're not going to force us to waste all that time and money and get a warrant, are you?" She replied, "Consider it a valuable education on the 4th amendment." Eventually, they showed up with a warrant and some cops just in case we resisted. My wife took her time reading the warrant. It said they could search the basement so she led them around to the back door and led them down to the basement where they discovered our criminal drain. If I hadn't been working 70 hours a week, maybe I would have had fun and tried to quash (not squash) the warrant and explored the modern case law involving regulatory searches - a nasty area. When we told our neighbors what we had done they said that they didn't know that one could resist a warrantless search. A good time was had by all. Quo warranto? This was also a town where the public and catholic schools all ended summer vacation on the same day. After that day, my youngest daughter was going about from place to place without apparent lawful occupation when an officious intermeddler asked her why she wasn't in school. She then told her questioner what I had told her to say, "My father doesn't believe in your schools, he says that they are all dominated by communists." Shuts them up every time. Duncan Frissell Who is writing this in the terrorist capital of the US - Jersey City, NJ - but who has been denied a tactically necessary assault rifle by Governor Jim Florio. When amonium nitrate and diesel fuel in a 16 to 1 ratio are outlawed only outlaws (and farmers) will have amonium nitrate and diesel fuel in a 16 to 1 ratio.