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Comment by Amadou | Hacker News Reader

Cass Sunstein is among the most famous living constitutional law scholars.

Obama himself graduated magna cum laude with a masters degree in law from Harvard and then lectured on constitutional law for 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Expertise in constitutional law doesn't necessarily translate to skepticism here. The constitution is not a moral authority on privacy.

Richard Clarke

He wrote an interesting op-ed before he was named to this committee. It appears to be critical of the NSA's operation, but a closer reading suggests his problem is about the degree, he's fine with massive record keeping, he just wants it in the hands of the telcos.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/worry-nsa-article-1.13697...

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Sunstein is a much more highly regarded legal scholar. Obama was a lecturer at UChicago. Sunstein was a professor. They're not in the same league. Sunstein is up there with Tribe.

I'm not sure where "moral authority on privacy" enters the picture. The question is how the program comports with the Constitution and the American system of governance.

Then why didn't they pick Tribe? The problem isn't that Sunstein doesn't have the legal chops. The problem is that Sunstein has gone on record (and written a book) supporting governmental overreach. You're hiring yes-men to do your "independent review".

This is the "purity test" theory of public policy. It's easy to be the kind of scholar that Obama (or Bush) can put on any panel; just shut up. Don't write anything ambitious or controversial.

The idea that Cass Sunstein is a "yes man" for Obama is laughable. If anything, it's the other way around.

You will also find in the work of most constitutional scholars something to upset any message board anarcho-libertarian, because very few of them believe in the black-letter absolutism that anarcho-libertarians choose to evaluate the Constitution in. You think there's nothing in Tribe's record to argue with? He's a gun control supporter, for one. You think pundits wouldn't be calling him an "Obama yes-man"?

You're right. I concede that Cass Sunstein is not the problem on the panel. And acknowledge the very troubling "shut up and say nothing" outcomes that my viewpoint has on anyone with any sort of ambition of public office.

But I'm still not convinced that the panel is anywhere near independent given the rest of the crew such as Morell and Richard Clarke.

I don't think the panel is ideologically independent at all, and rather doubt such independence was a goal of the panel to begin with. I don't think the panel is being run for "your" benefit.

(I appreciate how gracious your comment was. Thank you.)

I don't think the critique is whether they are a "Yes Man for Obama," but what their body of work shows about their inclinations regarding the topic at hand, that they and Obama are both pointers to the addresses of these activities and the goal is to prevent the activities from being garbage-collected. In a manner of speaking, and metaphors are lossy.

Ok, just to be clear, the comment I actually replied to ends with You're hiring yes-men to do your "independent review".

Right, and your rhetorical leap was in applying the concept of a yes-man to Obama himself. The quote:

The problem is that Sunstein has gone on record (and written a book) supporting governmental overreach. You're hiring yes-men to do your "independent review".

An issue at hand is whether the group will merely be researching means by which the ends can be maintained, that they are yes-men for the activities, the same way Obama appears to be. It's reasonable to question whether they have the same master, that they aren't truly independent.

Academic credentials are great and all, but don't they need to be applied to the real world before we can say that they know how to use any of it? The simple saying "the proof is in the pudding" comes to mind.

The panel isn't a referendum on the morality of the NSA surveillance. It's an investigation into the legality of the NSA surveillance.

Its a good thing that we can trust people to never let their clear policy preferences and similar biases impact their judgements of legality when the facts that they are investigating are not publicly reviewable in a way which would let their analysis be questioned.

No, wait, that's angels -- people can't really be trusted that way. If they could, we wouldn't need this panel in the first place.

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