This news from San Francisco: A federal appeals panel has narrowed the power of police to search the homes of hundreds of thousands of California criminals who are on probation and suspected of federal crimes. The three-judge panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that probationers’ homes can only be searched under the terms of probation. They cannot be searched as a “mere subterfuge for the pursuit of new criminal investigations.” The court’s decision effectively rebuffs a State Supreme Court decision last year that officers can go into the homes on a pretext, even looking for evidence against a probationers’ roommates, without a search warrant.