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"I don't really like the courts overturning laws for the same reason why you don't like silly laws being used as a gotcha. It puts the law in the hand of the opinion of a few people concerning what they think is right or wrong. Courts shouldn't be overturning legislature on "We don't like this!" grounds any more than police should be arresting gays on "We don't like you!" grounds. I'd rather someone show some guts and try to change the law legislatively."

I don't want to see the courts overturning any law without the decision being firmly grounded on constitutional principles. Part of the problem is that a state's constitution, and indeed even the Federal Constitution, can honestly say different things to different people. We have 'commerce clause' arguments on here all the time, and this is a site of folks who are mostly pretty close to one another on the political spectrum. If even we can't agree on constitutional matters, then it's inevitable that some of us will disagree strongly with the decisions (and the logic behind those decisions) of courts when dealing with constitutional questions. So long as a court isn't writing new law, and has firmly based its decision on the appropriate constitution, then I might disagree with the decision, but still agree with the authority used to make that decision. In this particular case, I agree with both.

Ditto to the rest of your post as well. As much as we'd all like to see 100% justice in our nation, we all know that it's simply not realistic. We can either give the police near-total control (as they have in some countries), or we can honor the legacy of freedom we have here. Personally, I'm much happier being more worried about criminals than government agents. I do not look forward to a time when that's reversed. I think we have a system that keeps us pretty close to equillibrium, between police powers and citizens' rights, and I think our efforts should be to continue that equillibrium until someone can come up with the 'perfect' system to replace our's.

It's honestly my feeling that a healthy society needs to swing gently between "a little too much police power" and "a little too much individual freedom" to stay on course. I think we're nearing the part of the swing that produces "a little too much individual freedom" and are close to taking a gentle swing back. No, I don't want things to swing too far toward the individual liberty side because I don't want to see the backswing toward police power that would result.

The reason things swing is because there are obvious flaws with each state and people swing in one direction as a cure for the other problem until the way they are swinging becomes an even bigger problem. Libertarians like to assume that one should never sacrifice liberty for security but civilization, itself, was essentially making that sacrifice. Even libertarians concede that people must restrict their liberty so that it does not infringe on the basic rights of others, thus sacrificing liberty for security. What's really the issue is finding the balance between the two and I don't think that's ever a stable state. Even if we achieved the libertarian Nirvana of individual freedom, the problems it would produce would create pressure toward more restrictions, which is why we wound up with all of those restrictions in the first place.