dissent for . . . trying to debate them on this issue.

Blissfully lacking self-awareness.

Making posts like that pretty much kill any kind of rational debate before they start.

as apparatchiks of the police state are the problem, and it's a lot more common than you think around here.

And in my opinion, contrary to the Founder's intent.

if you can't enforce it.

It seems to me.

You might want to rethink that one.

or we'd be British.

that's looking a little better than it used to.

...in the creeping totalitarianism by which our ruling class is chipping away at our alleged liberties for profit and power.

Might-makes-right ain't right, but it is right on.

...isn't the boogie man and when post or stories that get 124123 recs screaming that it is turn out to be false, half true or full of sophistry it's hard to take them seriously.

Seems like there's laws set around the 4th amendment and that any judge worth there salt will make sure they're followed.

Sounds like we have to elect someone that will select good judges

think belongs to them, also belongs to the phone companies.

The phone companies use that data to run their business. They use it for billing. They use it to reduce the impact of outages. To plan for upgrades. To plan for infrastructure changes.

I can remember a time when if you wanted a list of all of your calls in a month, you had to PAY the phone company to get them to provide it to you.

Its easy to make the case that the meta data belongs to the phone company, and not to the individual.

That's a real debate that could be had. And having it could lead to a change in the laws such that the meta data belongs to ME and YOU, and that the telecos are allowed to use it in a very restricted fashion.

Good luck having that discussion around here.

that phone calls are not ours or do not involve a reasonable expectation of privacy. How are they not like a letter? If anything, I think we naturally feel that they should be considered even more private than something we were willing to put down in writing on paper.

And just because the addressee or other party to the conversation might have the option of publishing the communication should not mean that the government has the option of seizing it without a warrant.

and see if you can, from that, at least see where some of the "debate" the OP describes comes from.

Who does the meta data belong to?

That's a very important question in this entire discussion. And the answer is debatable.

puts us on a slippery slope that leads to Homeland Security kicking down doors. If there is really nothing wrong with what they're doing, why are they at such pains to hide it?

I'm sorry, that's not a serious response.

The phone company has just as much a right to the meta data as you or I do. They need it to run their business.

I don't get too worked up over the slippery slope, non-debate, tactic whether the right or the left uses it.

There is statutory protection, but that's always been weaker than Constitutional protections.

The OP is correct. There is a debate to be had about where the lines are.

And some of those screaming loudest are apparently unwilling, or unable, to engage it.

our Reps swear to do one thing, defend and protect the Constitution means doing just that and that our current means of communication ARE covered by the 4th, I agree, there is too much screaming.

So, we agree that our phone and internet records do not belong to the government.

We, not the government which would be totally unacceptable in any country claiming to be a democracy, decide to do business with the telecoms, but nowhere that I have ever seen are we told that the decision to do business with a particular corporation gives that corporation our permission to pass our records on to the government.

So that brings us to the question 'when is it permissable by law for the government to take the extraordinary step of intruding into the lives of its citizens?

I look at the 4th Amendment for guidance on that and feel satisfied that we are protected from such intrusion. Unless we are sustpected of a crime. So then my question has been, being that I am a Verizon customer, 'what crime am I suspected of that justified the warrant to 'collect and store' my phone records? Do I have a right to that information or not?

It goes WAY beyond meta data and those three brave men tried their best to bring this to light for years. The government destroyed their lives for it.

Q: So Snowden did the right thing?

Binney: Yes, I think he did.

Q: You three wouldn't criticize him for going public from the start?

J. Kirk Wiebe: Correct.

Binney: In fact, I think he saw and read about what our experience was, and that was part of his decision-making.

Wiebe: We failed, yes.

Jesselyn Radack: Not only did they go through multiple and all the proper internal channels and they failed, but more than that, it was turned against them. ... The inspector general was the one who gave their names to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act. And they were all targets of a federal criminal investigation, and Tom ended up being prosecuted — and it was for blowing the whistle.

But I'm not going to listen to the videos if the article doesn't add details as to how exactly "this" goes beyond meta data.

The closest they seem to come in the article, is to point at that it is possible for an admin to potentially misuse their authority. And that is a very common IT problem.

Admins, because of their role in keeping a network "up", are able to go in and look at almost anything that's happening within their network.

This is no different than having the admin of a financial institution potentially take a look at the bank balance of a celebrity. They can get fired for doing it, but they often do have the ability to go and look. And if they get caught, they get fired.

That reality however, does not immediately lead to the conclusion that the government is abusing the basic capability of the admins.

And that wire-taps w/o warrant were considered LEGAL all the way until the Katz decision in the 1960's?

So, for 200 years, the 4th was taken at 'face value', that it covers the house, property, effect, and papers, and NOT your telephone conversations, and was NOT taken to mean you were guaranteed 'privacy' from electronic eavesdropping?

The point here is this ... you have the 'opinion' that collecting this meta-data is illegal under the 4th, that's fair enough, it's your opinion. But it doesn't 'make it so'.

It has to be either ruled upon, or a law needs to be written that says: 'the meta-data about the calls is 'owned' by the person making the calls, and is therefore covered under the 4th'. Just like a decision like Katz had to be handed down before law enforcement was made to get warrants in order to (legally) listen in on your friggin' phone conversations

you place a call you are using facilities in which you pay for a service, the caller does not in any way own the facilities. It is like driving down a public road, the driver does not own the road, they are just using the facility. I think there is a broad overreach on this issue, Snowden took actions on information which did not belong to him and he was not in charge. Criminal acts of stealing information with out a warrant, so he has committed something without warrant and he does not get to make his own rules no matter if he is working for the cause or not, the cause needs to look over their shoulder, this is treason, attacking the United States with a different type of weapon.

What you just said is that the government owns whatever info it collects on you.

And that you have no right to that info. No right to see it, correct it or control the distribution of your info.

you place a call does not mean you own the service provider.

Do you deny that the NSA can tap your every electronic move?

Of course they can. And what you are saying is that they own whatever they can collect on you. And you have no right to question them.

Snowden says that is unconstitutional. Why? Because he HAS thought about it. Obviously you have not. Proceed...

It could be construed as like shouting in the village square.

At the bottom of the whole thing is that criminals are usually morons. If I were planning a crime I certainly would not discuss it over the phone.

doesn't mean that's the only way it could be, or the way it should be.

And when I want to shout in a public square, I do that, or send a letter to the editor, or post a comment online on a page accessible to the general public.

I do not desire to publish to the general public the communications I whisper in someone's ear via a personal phone call or text to them, etc.

So warrants are required for wiretaps.

I'd love to know more about this, since my employer pays lots and lots of MRR for data, voice, and Internet circuits. These "wires", which look a lot like glass, are owned by large corporations like AT&T, Verizon, and so on. And no, I don't think it's ok for these companies to give the government a copy of data, but I did want to dispel the notion of public wires.

Writing a letter - the recipient party could always make it public. The Postal Service, being part of government, can't. In fact it may be against the law to open someone else's mail.

The other person could also volunteer the information in the phone call, without any wiretap. In theory the phone company could tap all the calls as they own the wires. Fortunately, they won't do that unless there's some way it makes money for them.

The same people who said that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights, had slaves back at home. Also to, notice how they said "all men" instead of all people. The rights were given when it was popular to gain support for the new government, and they've been taken away as it becomes useful for the government.

Rights are privledges of convenience.

It gets old. Basically, it is true that how rights are defined and given depends on the specific society and point in history. What we see as inherent rights today were not interpreted in the same manner at the time of the nation's founding.

It was the secret police of postwar East Germany that made a reputation for itself as one of the Soviet bloc's most pervasive domestic spy networks.

Like, you know, an actual, reasoned debate.

Is that power not a privilege also?

but there was a consideration that they were "inalienable." Jefferson said the Creator endowed them (on white men, as it would be interpreted by most in that day). That has since been extended, wisely, to all men and women.

The powerful do not give us our rights. In a dictatorship, the people there still have their rights, they are being trampled upon, but are still the rights of the people.

What do you think "unalienable rights" are? The writers of the original documents, being Enlightenment guys, certainly did believe that rights were god given. OK, creator given.

The founding fathers gave the rights to whom they wanted and restricted them from who they wanted as well. When you say "god given", whose god are they talking about and what about those who don't believe in the same deity or one at all. When politics and religion get involved, things get messy. What if the founding fathers use if "god" was only to add legitimacy or popular support to their claim.

to use against you in a court of law, without a warrant, I'm sorry ... but the 'particulars' of the what CONSTITUTES the 'Rights' conferred by the 4th ... are CLEARLY debatable. And have been under debate practically since the time it was written.

Just like that question of what EXACTLY constitutes your 2nd Amendment 'rights' ... is 'debatable'.

In reality, it appears that we're going to have to fight for the particular 'rights' that would be conferred by the actual 'ownership' of our phone call meta-data.

Otherwise, such data is not covered under the 4th.

Just like our 'right' to not have our phone calls listened to by the cops w/o warrant was NOT covered under the 4th for 40 friggin YEARS.

Is my rights do not belong to you, or the government.

What you don't get is that the constitution is there to tell the government what it can and can't do with my rights.

And here you are talking just the opposite. That my rights do not matter, that i must submit to the state.

And you wonder why y'all get called nasty names?

Because every right has areas where it does apply (e.g. right to free speech covering criticism of the government) and where it does not apply (free speech doesn't allow people to engage in fraud).

Gimme a friggin' break! Do you think the Founders didn't debate all this? They would have reached dozens of compromises in the process of writing the Constitution!!!!!! Do you think the Constitution was handed down by God to Benjamin Franklin at Independence Hall or something? These are human beings, trying to create a government, and they did not all agree on everything as obvious.

first, in the preamble and second, it is found in Article 1, Section 8.

The preamble reads: “WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution refers to the “general welfare” thus: “The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. . .”

The preamble clearly defines the two major functions of government: (1) ensuring justice, personal freedom, and a free society where individuals are protected from domestic lawbreakers and criminals, and; (2) protecting the people of the United States from foreign aggressors.'

http://www.lawandliberty.org/genwel.htm

The overall premise of the Constitution is to protect the people from oppressive Government. When we argue FOR the Government intruding on innocent people with no probable cause, using fear as a reason, we should recognize the danger of allowing even the first steps towards trusting any government, with encroachment of the rights of the people. the FFs warned even against themselves, pointing out that even they should not be trusted with the welfare, rights, of the people.

Having read a whole lot of history, and spoken to people who live or lived in states where the taking of rights 'for the common good' was accepted, the very idea of arguing FOR giving such power to any government, scares me far more than any terror attack.

'in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.'

opinions, which they have made clear in the many written exchanges between them as they contemplated what to do with the liberty from a government they viewed as unjust and oppressive, they had fought so hard to achieve.

And 99% of us on DU DO NOT want this data collected on us by the Government, for reasons of supposed 'security', or any other.

HOWEVER, the 4th enumerates specific 'things that are covered', and if we expect OTHER/MORE 'things' to be covered beyond those (like, say, the content of phone conversations, or the information on who we called and how long we spoke) ... based on, like, 'the spirit of the law' rather than the 'letter', then someone has to go to court and argue as to WHY the 'spirit of the law' would necessitate that 'coverage'. Or Congress has to pass a law that SAYS that.

You, as a citizen, don't just get to 'say': "the meta-data of all the phone calls I made is MINE, and is covered under the 4th!" ... and then it's 'made so'.

It doesn't work that way. Be cool if it did, but it doesn't. Someone(s) will have to fight for it. Just like someone had to fight for Katz.

your phone and internet records belong to the government, I don't see where we disagree.

Where, exactly, do you think that fight is going to start?

You are suggesting that the people with whom you disagree should just pipe down, because there is nothing Constitutionally wrong with what the government is doing - at this point in time.

Then you argue that it isn't right, but someone has to fight for it in order for the law to be changed.

Where do you suppose that fight is going to take place? Who is going to fight it? You're telling people to stop bickering about it - because it is currently within the law. So if everyone stops bickering and the people with whom you disagree pipe down, who, exactly is going to start that fight to get it changed?

Katz started his fight by challenging his conviction; his conviction was overturned by the Warren court - and we haven't seen the likes of that court for a very long time. How long should we wait, while our right to protect ourselves against intrusive government is eroded by the day? Until we have a court that isn't mired in fanatical conservatism? Do you honestly believe that the current SCOTUS would hear this case? If they did, how do you think they would find?

If you're going to come up with this pie-in-the-sky scenario, please finish the tale. Tell us who is going to fight for it. Tell us how they'll go about it. Tell us how long it will take - and how much more we should accept while the unknown defender of our rights is slogging through the courts. Tell us where that unknown defender is going to come from, since you seem to feel that everyone should just suck it up and accept this.

You want it both ways, seems to me. Total passive acceptance and full trust in a government that is daily proving itself less and less trustworthy - and "someone" who will fight to change it.

Sounds like the plot of a comic book.

when they wrote the Ninth Amendment.

Most of the people backing you up on this were, I expect, screaming bloody murder about Bush's domestic surveillance a few years ago. And making it "legal" through secret avenues and judiciary limbo would have made it more offensive, not less.

But that was when the red team was in charge. Now it's the blue team, and... go, team.

The FISA court was created in 1978 for exactly this purpose. Bush was bypassing it.

Obama's NSA is arguably breaking the 'spirit' of the law by collecting phone call meta-data (supposedly w/o any actual names attached), but until such time as it's shown that the Obama's NSA is actually breaking the LETTER of the law, like we KNOW Bush did ... I'm not going to hold his administration in such contempt as I did Bushie's.

One at least makes himself a criminal with his overreach. Simply institutionalizing the same acts and blocking real judicial review doesn't make them any more acceptable to me, and I expect wouldn't make them more acceptable to most Obama defenders either-- had Bush done it.

Under Bush, the executive branch of the government could undertake ANY level of surveillance with no oversight by the other 2 branches of our government. Such action places all authority of action within a single branch of government. And the way they were doing it was illegal.

Under Obama, they used the FISA court in the EXACT fashion that court was created to handle. The FISA court has been used to obtain warrants for which their were national security since 1978. As a result, the judicial and legislative branches of government maintained their oversight roles in these matters.

This is not just a point of technicality.

as are the freedoms granted therein. It is not Democracy without it. And of course, that is the plan (can anyone say "neocon" and "George Bush" and remember where this slippery slope began in earnest?)

Even putting forth the concept that the Constitution (and thus our country) is "negotiable" is itself the slippery slope. No conversation may start there; they must all end there.


" The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. " -Noam Chomsky''

And the concept of "Constitution negotiable" is such discombobulated framing.

That's a straw man my friend.

However, the question of whether or not the 4th Amendment guarantees us 'privacy' is CLEARLY debatable, and we've BEEN debating it for 200 friggin years.

Look, the FF's most certainly KNEW of the concept of 'privacy'. And even w/o 'phones' existing, they certainly were aware of the concept of 'eavesdropping'. Which, when you get down to it, is what we're discussing here, albeit in a much more sophisticated form.

Thus, it's actually very easy to imagine a scenario wherein a right to PRIVACY was actually, literally 'written into' the 4th amendment.

However, as we can plainly see, IT WAS NOT.

Therefore, the way it works, see, is that we as citizens kinda have to 'fight' (i.e. have our ideas represented by an attorney, in a court of law) for what we believe to be the 'spirit of the law', i.e. 'a guarantee of privacy', NOT just a guarantee against the cops coming into our homes and taking our shit away.

That means ... for anything that's above and beyond our 'homes, papers, effects', we need laws or court decisions that SAY, specifically, 'this is covered under the 4th as well'. As of Katz, our phone CALLS ... are covered.

However, our telephone meta-data has not been 'decided' as being 'covered' under the 4th YET.

Constitution by name, are thus not covered by it. Astonishment. "Interpretation" is a very dangerous thing.

This week it was decided that corporations cannot patent our DNA, so that's a step in the right direction, in regard to metadata of a sort. Since the discussion is now national let's hope that new levels of solidity may be fully agreed upon regarding our Rights. Peace.

The people that are or aren't collecting the data have proven time after time they're willing to lie to protect that ability. So no actual debate can occur: there's no way to know what's false or not.

Did they stop ten or fifty or five hundred (Or whatever number they're going to throw out today) terrorists with the data? Probably not. But the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. They claim they stopped terrorists? Prove it.

Spying: Verb: Work for an organization by secretly collecting information about enemies or competitors.

So we don't disagree about it being spying. It IS spying and some of us are splitting hairs to try to make it not spying, even though what they've actually admitted to couldn't possibly be a more perfect fit for the definition of spying.

However, we don't all necessarily agree that collecting phone call meta-data (without the names attached to the numbers) actually constitutes 'spying' (at least, not on any particular individual), and even if we did, it would be largely irrelevant, because 'spying' is not mentioned in the Constitution.

Look, we'd ALL 'like it to be' that the 4th specifies that the government isn't allowed to 'spy on us' in ANY CONCEIVABLE WAY w/o probable cause, but that doesn't make it so.

The way to STOP this data collection is not by fighting amongst ourselves.

It's to get a law passed, or a decision handed down that says, specifically, that our phone-call meta-data belongs to US, not the phone company, and that it is to be considered part of 'our homes/property/papers/effects', just like our actual phone call content was (finally, after 40 years of debate) deemed to be under Katz.

We are not governing ourselves and we have'nt been for a long time. Who gives government it's power? Government grants rights and privileges? I see this being quite confused by many. In reality the government doesn't grant anything that we don't tell it to or allow it to. But we seem to have either never learned that our have forgotten it.

“Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.”

Franklin D Roosevelt

Apologists cannot 100% let Obama off the hook! No more than the other side can let congress off the hook! Obama has not stepped forward asking that this be fixed either. He has not led in reducing the patriot act, etc. So I assume he is fine with all of this.

That is exactly it. We keep hearing how it is so clearly unconstitutional and keep trying to say that conclusion is not that simple.

As it goes through the courts, the government will defend it as usual and we'll hear about how Obama's administration should not defend it and that Obama is a dictator for doing so. The solution always seems to be let the law lie dormant on the books rather than let the question come to light. I think it is people who just don't understand what the courts do. And someone who does not understand that at all debating politics ends up just making emotional outbursts.

A well known limit to the first. This is about the need to issue warrants...this is not open for debate, unless you hate freedoms.

Go ahead and alert this...bin Ladin won.

Doesn't seem to be any question for the gunnies about the rights that the 2nd Amendment spells out. You're saying the 4th Amendment isn't cut and dried? Is this like the Bible? There are different interpretations therefore the rights granted to us in the 4th amendment are at the government's own interpretation and discretion?

Go over to the gungeon and see if anyone will accept the idea that 2nd Amendment rights are debatable.

doesn't think an amendment can be ratified doesn't make it so. That is just silly to try and justify an argument by telling us we should go talk to a bunch of gun nuts about limiting their access to weapons.

As a society changes so must the laws that govern it, using a document that is 200 yrs old as the end all is illogical.

And, no, it's not a silly comparison. IF 4th amendment rights are debatable then the 2nd, 1st, 10th 14th, 27th are debatable too. Let's get those women outta the voting booth!

but there are limitations & exceptions to everything. Such as not everything is considered protected speech (yelling fire in a theater), people can't own whatever weapon they want, when you obtain your drivers license you sign over your right to refuse a breathalyzer. There are also other exemptions to the 4th such as the plain view doctrine, if officers are walking down a well known path & plainly see something illegal going on in your yard or house the language of the 4th is out the window.

Everything is relative to the ever revolving laws, jumping up & acting like one's hair is on fire without even a basic knowledge of the US laws protecting US citizens from intel gathering is baseless & naive.

If the constitution is a SPECIFYING document, as opposed to a LIMITING document, then the answer becomes obvious. The government was not given the power specifically by the constitution to violate our privacy, so what they're doing is unconstitutional.

Now, do they have the right to violate our privacy in this regards, Roe v. Wade says they do not and that we have a right to privacy. Can it be suspended for national security? I don't see anything in the constitution saying they can do such a thing, and considering Ben Franklin's quite famous quote, I'm near certain they didn't enshrine such a clearly controversial power into our founding documents. But lets take it a step further, is it actually necessary for our national security? Terrorists kill less people than lightning strikes, so unless they can show an overwhelming amount of LEGITIMATE foiled plots (as opposed to those hatched by the FBI and given to witless stooges), then they can't really claim that they require these powers for national security.

Now the untold mouse in the room, do I believe they're doing it to establish the groundwork for a fascist state... Probably not, it's probably just a kick back and rip off operation by the rich corporate interests than run the government. Since they already have what they want, why would they bother throwing back the curtain?

When the Constitution was written, there was no check on Congress within. The First Amendment for example, was written to guide us. Congress shall pass no law. If the Constitution was being written today, it would have to say The Supreme Court shall rule as invalid and unconstitutional any law which.

The Constitution was intended as a guide, a moral anchor to which we would all use as a touchstone in the future. The Fourth Amendment was a direct response to the abuses the Colonists had endured. Soldiers in Red Jackets and authority figures entering houses whenever they liked, and searching for whatever they hoped to find, usually evidence of treason to the crown. The Founders had known this abuse first hand, and it was fresh in their minds. So they wrote the 4th Amendment referencing the technology of the time, papers, and saying you would be secure in those things from unreasonable searches.

The first of the slippery slopes is where probable cause came in. Strict interpretation would have required the police to get a warrant to search your person during an arrest. Would that be an unreasonable standard? Perhaps, but where we are now, which is that since a phone is not a paper, it is just fine to search it with a vague standard of privacy.

The 4th, like the others, was intended as a guide. A moral anchor to protect the people. Remember the movie the Patriot? What Gibson says about 3,000 men a mile away trampling your rights as easily as one man three thousand miles away was the opinion, if not as eloquently expressed, of many. They wanted assurances that what they were being asked to support, and fight for, was a major change not just trading one tyrannical government for another.

Congress shall pass no law, those words should guide Congress, but how many times in History have we seen Congress argue that they can pass the law, and if it doesn't pass constitutional muster, the Supreme Court will say so. Bush signed Campaign Finance Reform and said he believed it was a violation of the 1st Amendment, but he was going to sign it and let the Supreme Court decide. If you believe that something is wrong, you don't do it. While I believed that Campaign Finance Reform was fine Constitutionally speaking, I called him a coward at the time, because he did not stand up for what he said he believed. As for all those Supreme Court decisions that something was unconstitutional? When the court said so too often, the Congress started writing exceptions into those laws.

In this NSA disaster, they wrote in that the normal Courts would have no jurisdiction. Hardly the checks and balances being touted as part of the wonderful oversight. One court has jurisdiction, and no appeal is legally possible.

Even the Military has a court of appeals, and then a final review by the Supreme Court is in the system. Yet for the PATRIOT ACT, no such appeals process is in place. All the review you get is whatever lie Clapper and the rest tell under oath, which is the least untruthful lie they can get away with.

When you have to lie, you are doing something wrong. That's a lesson I learned as a boy. If you have to lie about it, you are doing something wrong. That is the point, and that is the situation. Debating what has been prohibited by the Supreme Court, and what is authorized by whatever Supreme Court precedence, most of which we rail against on this very site, is asinine. Is the NSA spying on us? Yes. Is that at the minimum an absolute moral violation of the 4th Amendment? Yes. Is it at a minimum wrong and immoral for a Government to do that? Yes.

Just yesterday, I railed against a further erosion of my 5th Amendment rights by the Supreme Court. Just yesterday I argued it was wrong. It may be the law of the land, but it is still wrong morally and ethically. You can always find an excuse not to follow the rules, and because the Court, that has not always been nearly as wise nor as thoughtful as one would hope, said it was OK, doesn't make it OK in the least.

When President Obama was Candidate Obama, he as a Constitutional Scholar said it was wrong. That should have been his battle cry through the campaign, and through his administration. He had the power to do the right thing, but he is left with platitudes and legal hair splitting arguments from the self appointed apologists that I call the Defenders of the Faith.

It is still wrong, it is not the protections that are envisioned when one reads those words. It is not the world we should have, and it is not the world I intend to argue for. I will always argue in favor of civil rights, and the end of authoritarian abuses of the citizens. Even if those abuses have been codified by the Supreme Court. Because I have not lost my moral center, and an unjust law, is no law.