Well, spring is here again. The return of legs and various other body parts that have been hiding since October is always well received by the collective male libido. That first day, when all females say “today I’m going to wear shorts with a negative inseam,” is often one of the happiest male moments of the year.

I think this is what people actually mean when they ramble on about how spring puts love in a young man’s heart.

Spring isn’t putting love in a guy’s heart, it’s putting blood between his legs.

Spring means more than just increased sex drives — it brings with it a whole gamut of warm-weather activities.

Just Tuesday, for example, some buddies and I went and hit some slow-pitch softballs at a batting cage.

There’s nothing that makes me feel better than paying for a service that would be free if one of us could pitch.

Driving back from the batting cage, we had the windows rolled down, hair blowing back (at least on the left side of my head), the music blaring and sunglasses on. I had my 1996 Corsica moving at a slow roll because we were just so damn cool.

As I was attempting to goad a 70-year-old man to race me off of a stoplight, I began to realize that the weather was making me act like Don Johnson.

It’s safe to say that driving around and pretending that you’re a stud is probably my favorite act of temperature-induced insanity.

But watch out there cool guy! Don’t be acting like you’re a Colombian drug lord with a snazzy Hawaiian shirt.

Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling on Monday in the Wyoming v. Houghton case, police officers will be given the right to search vehicles and all containers within vehicles if they have probable cause.

That includes any personal items that are the property of a passenger, in this case a woman’s purse.

So there you are, driving along and having yourself a little cool-guy role-play when all of a sudden you see cherries flashing in your rear-view. The police pull you over because you just blew through an orange light.

Because you lent your car to a bunch of stoners last night and it reeks of marijuana, the officer searches your car, including your passengers’ possessions.

As a result of that search, a friend of yours ends up losing his favorite crack pipe, which he happened to be carrying in his underwear.

OK, so I’m not all that worried about that particular incident happening. As far as I know, no one I know has a favorite crack pipe. It’s hard to pick just one!

What I don’t like is how unbelievably dangerous this ruling is. If there ever were a slippery slope, this is it.

Why in the world should probable cause allow officers to search anything that is clearly the possession of a passenger? Doesn’t the Supreme Court see where this ruling is heading?

The Court argued that officers must be allowed to look anywhere they need to successfully complete their search.

Anything that might impede that search, including personal belongings of people who aren’t involved in the incident in the slightest, is fair game.

The court is putting a little too much emphasis on the importance of the search here. It’s supposedly the American way to err on the side of the accused, and many citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights are clearly going to be getting stomped on here.

I understand how frustrated officers must feel when they realize there is something bad going down inside a certain Ferarri, but their hands are tied.

But the fact that things like that are happening means that democracy is working. Police shouldn’t be sweeping at will through the personal belongings of everyone that looks like they might possibly be an uncaught felon.

First, it is simple vehicle searches, but what could be next? Men in black suits on the street stopping all suspicious looking individuals and giving them the rubber glove treatment?

If everyone who looks a little shady starts getting searched, a trip across campus will feel like a proctology examination to many ISU students.

I know what the conservative Supreme Court is attempting to accomplish here, and I commend that. But police don’t need this power, and to give it to them is unconstitutional.

All I want to do is drive down the road over the speed limit with passengers who have lots of contraband in their possession without getting pulled over and having my friends searched until they confess to killing Kennedy.

With the warm weather in the air, is that so much to ask?

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David Roepke is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Aurora, Iowa.