Secret docs reveal: an FBI with vast hidden powers

USA has elected and politically appointed judiciary doesn't it? If so then is that at all unexpected, which politicians would put their guy in the judges seat if they thought they'd then have to obey the law.

> checks and balances

I'd say the two are mutually exclusive.

Here's a newsflash -- the Dems are just as responsible for our current state of affairs by doubling down on pointless identity politics, hateful rhetoric, and hopeless fake news. Such adherence ideological extremism will only serve to destroy the Democratic party before 2018.

The problem has a solution: states right. ~400 million people will never agree on a leader or have their beliefs encapsulated by 1 person/party.

More choice, more parties, more power distribution

The secret surveillance goes to the FISA surveillance act, from back in 1978.

I'm not inclined to put a party's stamp on this, I too believe it's systemic. But if you must, that was under Democrat Jimmy Carter's Presidency, with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.

Perhaps you should try to re-frame your statement in the context of local vs state vs federal government.

In reality, a government does not have to be big to be corrupt enough to willfully harm or infringe upon the civil liberties of its citizens. The "enforcement" piece of a local government doesn't have to be large to harass or detain or jail people. Or protesters. Or anybody they dislike for being ___________ or having voted __________.

The terrifying thing about Trump's administration is that he's fueling this delusion of an America that doesn't exist any more, empowering corruption at the local level (Martial Law) while simultaneously removing options for citizens to redress where grievances about their civil liberties matter -- at the federal level.

If your choices are to have a 99% chance of taking 50% of the pot or to have a 50% chance of taking 100% of the pot and a 50% chance of someone else taking it and you being imprisoned or murdered by them, you pick the one that doesn't involve a significant risk of catastrophe.

The problem is you don't get to pick before the election, you get pick after. And then it isn't a 50% chance anymore. If you won the pot you have no incentive to change and if you lost then you don't have the power to change.

This is one of the problematic consequences of the 17th Amendment. Originally US Senators were chosen by the state legislatures. The purpose of the US Senate was to represent the states in the federal government, so it was inherently a check on federal power. States don't want too strong a US President.

But we got rid of that in a fit of populism in the 20th century. Meanwhile it's still the case that only a third of the Senate seats are on the ballot in a given election. And consider what the circumstance is when you simultaneously want to limit the executive and have the power to do it: It's the lame duck session.

To do it you need a) to currently have control of government (Presidency + House + a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate), and b) to not control any of those in the incoming government, so you fear what the new government will do, enough to pass laws to limit their power.

But since only a third of Senators can change at once, and it's unheard of that all open seats switch from one party to the other, that never actually happens. So the President gets stronger but never weaker, because we decided to dismantle a check on federal power and replace it with nothing.

Systematic how (what's the system, so far)? Wrecking how? What process? Talking in vague codewords without meaning (except in your head) does not tell me anything about what's wrong. I cannot agree with this kind of babble.

Well, I think a parliamentary system with proportional representation would help a lot. In those systems, the parties/lists might trade horses, but you know that your vote bought some measure of strength for a platform you actually believe in. Oh, and real civil-service protections to keep government staff from being fired for political reasons, including for security and military officials.

That is the full sentence I wrote. I do not allow people to reword the things I write to make the statement change its meaning, as you have done here by shifting the subject from "the approach" to "everything". There is a mighty difference between bringing an approach to an end and bringing everything to an end. We already have a ton of people on this planet speaking for others, I figure it's my bag whether I defend against it or not. I've noted that most people who like to speak for others will take other's words, twist them a bit, then ask a leading question to change the conversation in a way that allows them to speak for others in a very unique way. It's an efficient technique when things are going well, given it can raise interest in groups. It's not so great when things are off the rails. All of that is regardless of whether an individual had intent to do it or whether they may formulate rationalizations to defend their actions in the future. Speaking for others isn't right and it's a wasteful, recursive operation.

Nevertheless, I will clarify that I am claiming the intent by humans to force everything into an objective reality here is causing issues for what can be considered the meta or unknown - the yet to be if you will. I don't consider the unknown anything magical necessarily, but I do consider it the result of causality based on both the current state of the universe plus some yet to be discovered phenomenon that governs quantum events and the rest of the unknowns around us. It is a direct observation that we struggle to explain these "types" of intuition of the unknown with objective descriptions or knowledge.

A good example that I give is aliens. About half of people believe in aliens and half don't. No probabilities exist that make any sense to us to figure out if aliens exist, so we are left looking for an objective (observed) alien signal to "prove" they exist. Any tendency to say "there are no aliens" is illogical, given the lack of proof of them is not proof they don't exist. On the other hand, claiming "there are aliens" has some reasonable intuitive basis, given we're claiming we exist and we're here on this rock in the middle of a HUGE universe. It's faith that aliens exist, but it is not observed, yet, so it can't be objective. Faith is based on a few primaries, including sacredness which is a regard with great respect and reverence by a particular religion, group, or individual. Making something sacred is primarily elevating the belief in the unknown, based on an intuition which is not forced by recursive self-supporting speculation or speaking for others.

So, claiming there are (objective) aliens is illogical, given lack of proof. Someone saying they have faith there are aliens is fine, however. Saying people who have faith there are aliens are wrong (because it is not yet observed) is speaking for others, given their internal frame is faith based and a truth to them.

There are certainly other examples. Michael Faraday believed there was a single unifying force in the universe, but was unable to prove it before he died. He did manage to pop off inventing the electric motor, but his master intent of discovering anti-gravity went undone. Still, he had faith anti-gravity (or shielding of gravity) was possible. I know this because I have read his words saying as much.

So, I have faith that anti-gravity will be discovered. Nobody else in existence can tell me otherwise, given they'd be speaking for me while doing so. And there's the point I was making to begin with - speaking for another's faith is speaking for their internal frames, which are subjective in nature. Not everything here is objective, so expecting that it is is also akin to speaking for all others here. We have free will, and I won't let anyone tell me otherwise.

I've left off discussing issues with faith in aggregates. Religion has gone horribly wrong in the past, and will likely do so again in the future.

Thank you for the question!

I am sure there is a better term than "hijacked".

The Intercept is definitely a leftist publication but to say that they are partisan Democrat just isn't true. They were one of the few publications that consistently reported on the outrageous drone bombing campaigns during the Obama administration. Glenn Greenwald was even accused of being a Trump supporter by people in the Hillary camp for about as long as they were running against each other.

But apparently, critical thinking skill is becoming rarefied even at HN.