NSA revelations only 'the tip of the iceberg,' says Dem lawmaker

By telling us that 1) Snowdon is true, 2) Snowdon was a very small cog and doesn't realise the extent of it all, she's going further than all others at that briefing, and hopefully encouraging more whistleblowers to step up (and ruin their own lives).

    Party      app   disapp
    ----------------------
    Democrats   49%    40%
    Independent 34%    56%
    Republicans 32%    63%
    
    All         37%    53% 

The Republicans haven't shown any sign of fixing the structural problems in their party that prevented them from offering an electable candidate in 2012. If they don't do that first, they won't do any better in 2016.

As John Huntsman noted in one of the early GOP debates: "Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I'm saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can't run from science". Unfortunately for the GOP, their nomination process almost guarantees that people like Huntsman, who believe that running from science is the wrong approach, are out early.

The Republicans need to get the Tea Party to split off and form a third party, and then run moderate Republicans. They would then be able to run candidates who don't want to fuck the environment, massively cut science budgets, ignore climate change, put all our energy eggs in the oil basket, cut aid to the poor, and so on. This would give them candidates that align better with the majority (and more important with the directions the majority is trending). They could more than make up for the loss of the Tea Party people, I think, by getting independents and picking up some moderate Democrats.

You could read "fight" in that sentence as intransitive and "counterterrorism" as the domain of that fight.

Well, no. The Constitution is not the be-all and end-all of governance, nor does it forbid all possible onerous behaviours. The position of the USG is that what the NSA engages in is constitutional. Even if that were the case, that wouldn't make it a good idea--unless it were necessary. You could implement a 1000% tax on beer and it would be perfectly legal and constitutional, but would also need to be somehow necessary in order for it to be justifiable.

Even if what the NSA is doing is deemed constitutional, that doesn't mean it's right or a good idea. In order for that to be the case, it'd also have to have a strong claim of necessity.

Many court opinions about a law or government action hinge on whether there is a compelling state interest in the result. When balancing what a government does against rights defined by the bill of rights, you need to show that there is a good reason for the government to do what it's doing beyond simply denying the people their guaranteed rights.

For example, you may have laws about having a parade without a permit. Now, if you took an extreme view on the first amendment, you might say this abridged the rights of the people to peaceably assemble and speak their mind. However, there is a compelling state interest in controlling access to the roads that are shared by everyone; if anyone could parade at any time, it would screw up traffic. So governments are allowed to require a parade permit, as long as the requirements for obtaining one are content-neutral and don't single out any particular groups.

Likewise, whether the spying is legal does depend on whether it's necessary. The fourth amendment clearly says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..." Whether the search is reasonable plays a large role in whether it's legal. Thus, necessity is important, as well as being legal in the sense of having followed the letter of the law (gone through the appropriate warrant process, as outlined by the various laws and regulations that control it).

So, we have 'to keep secrets' being applied here, as a dominant principle, because to not do so is unsafe, irresponsible, bad policy, practice, americans will get killed, and so on.

But I would wager that the people making these statements aren't the ones who put themselves into the position of being killed because of associationg with, or killing for, The Country. People need to be reminded, in this big 'secrecy debate' that secrets can be kept, whether a person is dead or alive, but only the LIVING tell the truth for the greater good.

We already have plenty of alternative parties. Depending on your political leanings, they may or may not be appropriate to you, but there are groups like the Libertarian Party, Green Party, Constitution Party, Worker's World Party, Prohibition Party, Pirate Party, etc. Hell, there's even a "Modern Whig Party".[1]

But a big part of the problem is the mechanism by which we elect representatives to our government. Most of the US uses single member district, "first past the post" (FPTP) voting[2], which has a side-effect of tending to create a "two party system"[3].

There are various initiatives around to push for the use of other voting systems which are more favorable to 3rd parties, like Approval Voting[4], Condorcet methods[5], Range voting[6], etc., but guess who typically sets the standards for how elections are conducted? Yeah, officials (mostly Democrats and Republicans) elected under the existing system! Talk about a "chicken or the egg" problem. But this is one of the first things that needs to be attacked, if we want a less corrupt, and more responsive government.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_th...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting

[5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method

[6]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting

I think the real action here is just getting one good, honest person to oust a current "low hanging fruit" politician. It needs to be more surgical, and convey a message that any one of you could be removed if the general population really wants to so get your shit together.

This doesn't mean they're not being collected, recorded, analyzed, transcripted, read, or cross-corrolated.

Just that there isn't a listener assigned to each and every person in the United States to listen to their phone calls.

As someone who's largely a supporter of Obama, I was instantly left cold by his statement. It assured me of absolutely nothing.

Sadly if we had true equality this guy would be roasted....