Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.

Kelo: Takings clause. (Fifth amendment, "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_S...). I would not be so hasty to decide that it's not "a threat to the US". It's a big deal as to what constitutes a "public use", by and large, urban complaints over gentrification are exacerbated because cities will declare whole neighborhoods "blighted" and then turn it over to a politically connected rich guy to bulldoze and flip for wealthier tenants. One might argue the kelo case just got a lot of attention because Suzette Kelo is a white woman. Another big eminent domain abuser is Walmart, which without eminent domain would have a much much harder time building massive box stores.

Arguably eminent domain abuse is more of a big deal than NSA wiretapping, it's something that has an impact, an disproportionate impact on the unwealthy and politically marginalized, and it happens in your backyard, all the time, for example: http://reason.com/reasontv/2007/11/15/national-city

As for myriad, I happen to be against patents in general, but my point was that the myriad lawyers really did a solid job of patenting genes. Despite my objection to patenting, given that it's constiutional and legal, I disagree with the SCOTUS decision, that the PCR product (cDNA or otherwise) is actually an artificial molecule by any reasonable definition of molecule and should be allowed to be patented. More subtly, I think it is Congress' responsibility to decide whether or not genes (in the fashion of myriad's patents) should be patentable. So it's an example of crafty lawyers (myriad's lawyers) extending their de jure power (using "composition of matter" patents to de facto become "gene" patents). And then the SCOTUS comes and creates this convoluted judgement about cDNA vs PCR, and introns versus no introns, which speaks to my point about how the court (probably not deliberately) works to incentivise legal cleverness, further justifying the existence of its own profession - possibly at the expense of society's broad interest in having a simpler legal code.

If we have many citizens being even 10% that thoughtful, then we are okay.

> Arguably eminent domain abuse is more of a big deal than NSA wiretapping,

Yes, except for what I'm concerned about, another President Nixon with an "enemies list" who wants data not just from the IRS but also the NSA, CIA, FBI, and Obamacare. Then he might become a tyrannical dictator.

In the 'normal course of events', with the NSA getting even a grade of C in protecting the data they have, you may be correct that Kelo is of more concern.

Apparently for now, so far, all that data the NSA has gotten has not actually caused much in real problems to our democracy. And I can believe the claims that we're talking only a few thousand people in the US individually 'investigated' via that NSA data. And I can believe that on a good day General Alexander really does do the right things for the US and, really, is a significant aid to US national security.

Still, there's the Fourth Amendment and the chance of another Nixon. And there are the concerns of the founding fathers. So I believe that the NSA has been trashing the Constitution and that the SCOTUS has to correct that situation.

It might take two years for the SCOTUS to issue even their first related opinion. Really, the whole process will take time. I don't think that what the NSA has done so far is so dangerous to the US in the short term that we can't afford the time. Still, long term, we need the Constitution intact.

Here's some 'perspective' on the threat of Kelo: Last night watched a VCR of an old PBS program 'Great Composers', this one on R. Wagner. I like classical music.

If forget about everything about Wagner except just the music, keep just the music, and ignore even the libretti, f'get about his love life, politics, connections with wacko King Ludwig, his various essays, what his wife Cosima wrote about some of what he said in his 60s, some of his professional fights, etc. and pay attention just to the music, and there only the better, say, 90% of his music, and like classical music, then he can be amazing. To me, astounding.

I want to get my start up done and then work through some of his orchestration, say, for the "Prelude" to 'Parsifal', and get an idea how the heck he did it. The orchestration for his "Magic Fire Music", from 'Die Walküre', is likely simpler, and still I'd like to work through the details.

Heck, I'd like to type in such music and have a computer-based synthetic orchestra calculate the 'performance' and then adjust the orchestration to see what was causing some of the amazing effects he did achieve.

Long ago I picked out some of his 'themes' ('leitmotifs') on violin -- they can be simple to play and still be just magic, and much that he did was not at all simple.

So, the PBS program mentioned that Wagner had an idea: In Munich is a big, long, wide street with a big statue in a big circle in the middle and the street leading up to a big parliament building or some such. So, Wagner's idea was, next to the parliament building, put up an opera house, by far the biggest ever, and have 'government and art' joined! And before his opera house he wanted another long, wide street.

One little problem: His street would require leveling much of old Munich, much as you mentioned. Well, the 'city fathers' of Munich were not quite as taken with Wagner's grand dreams (likely great to have when sitting alone at a piano and writing fantastic music about fantasies of magic swords, flying horses, magic gold rings, gods coming to earth and mating with humans, etc. but a disaster if applied to level much of Munich) and turned down Wagner's dreams. So later a much more reasonable opera house was built for Wagner's music in Bayreuth!

Wagner's music was a good start on much of the music of Hollywood of the past 80 years or so, e.g., Max Steiner's music for 'King Kong'. So, Wagner's music has had an impact even without leveling much of Munich!

Generally, if the city fathers of Munich can turn down Wagner, and maybe also King Ludwig, then generally US city fathers will be somewhat reluctant to level large parts of their cities, Kelo decision or not!

I think that your cross-cultural analysis is not borne out by the facts.

The university of chicago, my alma mater, is very guilty of converting hyde park through heavy handed use of eminent domain.

There's this: http://battleforbrooklyn.com/

This one is also pretty crazy: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/nyregion/25columbia.html?_...

A general watchdog for eminent domain abuse: http://www.emdo.blogspot.com/

To the credit of what you say, though, 7 states have passed strong legislation against abusive eminent domain takings in the wake of Kelo, and 15 more have tightened the ship significantly, and a few state supreme courts have weighed in as well.