Ninth Circuit rules NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal

Then there is the issue of having had a crime committed. A charge must be clearly defined, proved by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury of the accused's peers, tried in a court with appropriate jurisdiction, and the sentence must not be deemed either cruel or unusual in nature, and they must be brought by a someone with standing. Usually an Attorney General or prosecutor, who themselves wield the power of prosecutorial nullification, or as they prefer to call it so as not to night it's sister phenomena, jury nullification, prosecutorial discretion. The official in that position iseitherelected or a political appointee, so has every reason to be highly selective in the cases that deserve their time, effort, and publicity.

Make no mistake, the halls of justice that are the courts are not by any means apolitical. To give credit where it's due, of all the branches, they are the most noteworthy for illustrating active attempts to be apolitical, but there is still much indirect political taint to be found.

To be honest, I kind of wonder whether it was better to let the State Legislature decide. Wasn't alive then though and haven't done the research.

The purpose of such rules in practice is to help the American public to sleep at night despite having tacitly authorised a nightmare. You know the scene in Casablance, even if you've never watched the movie - it has permeated our culture Captain Renault claims to be shocked to discover that the club is being used for gambling, undercut by a croupier giving him his winnings.

If you don't want spooks to do what spooks do, don't pass a law saying it mustn't happen, don't vote for a government that promises they'll exercise oversight over the spooks to prevent it. Just get rid of the spooks. Congress could, if the American people wanted - which they do not - abolish these agencies entirely. They'd just cease to exist and while I'm sure some small scale abuses would continue you just can't run programmes to snoop these huge volumes on pocket change, and companies would be less likely to co-operate with informal requests than with the Department of Justice.

But as much as they enjoy bluster, Americans are afraid, and so the spooks will certainly continue to be authorised and "outrages" will happen when once in a while it is revealed that the spooks are doing what spooks do but nothing actually changes. Eventually it'll get to be so routine the The Onion has a pre-built news article for it like for the mass shootings.

Besides Hamilton, they absolutely did not. They were just anti-direct-democratic because they were well aware of the logistical problems, and structural ills of prior democracies. There is no concept of "Nobility" in the United States. We have Civil Servants. People who as a consequence of their office, in many ways have much higher legal exposure than the normal citizen. All Citizens may take any office with only mild qualifications on Age, literacy, and how one is chosen to get there.

That is the exact opposite of Aristocratic. That leaning is a much more recent thing that has emerged out of nearly half a century of political and economic consolidation through wage stagnation and technological advancement paired with a complete dismantling of top-to-bottom wealth redistribution, whether by market forces/government action notwithstanding.

>>My words are a desire to see an amendment/law/ruling to go further in holding these leaders of our government accountable. As it's toxic to maintaining the social contract within our society, IMHO. If we are lenient on political corruption, even the foundations will crumble, IMHO.

The founders actually culturally understood this believe it or not. If you look back in history, you can find numerous examples of incitement to refuse to engage in base behavior in executing the duties of office. It isn't universal, but the examples are relatively generous in frequency of having been recorded. You can also find many of the Founders personal papers and nuggets of wisdom warning that there is no greater danger to the Union than to the undermining of it's legitimacy through unwise or impulsive action or political theater.

Abraham Lincoln came to treat his responsibility to the country as something close to religious. Franklin, Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson all realized that a State would only last as long as the people running it could comport themselves as more-than-a-person in the fulfillment of their duties to the populace, and that the populace remained United in their respect and maintenance of each other's liberties, even in the face of taking on personal risk for the preservation of their fellow man's freedom.

Lincoln himself saw litigation and to a point legislation as a fundamental breakdown. The raising of an exception, if you will, of such a magnitude that it took the body of the Nation coordinated through it's elected Government to resolve the ill so rampant that not even a town could alone fix the issue.