Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America

>When the Supreme Court says "unconstitutional", that's different because there the court is using one of their fundamental powers. The court can't strike down a law just because they don't like the law.

Neither can the executive. If they chose to do otherwise without any constitutional authority the courts should rule against them. Obviously the president can still just do whatever and defy everyone, but if the president is sufficiently in the wrong then you get subordinates siding with the constitution and impeachment proceedings etc., and ultimately a popular revolution if things go sufficiently badly.

Congress is different because they can just strike down (i.e. repeal) a law because they don't like it, but that doesn't change the fact that if they say "we're not passing this, it's unconstitutional," that's the end of the story and the thing in question is not happening, and they all swear an oath to do that when they take office.

>If Senator Wyden says that something's unconstitutional and that is why he's voting the way he is, say, on the Senate Intel Committee, fine, but the courts and the Executive branch won't honor that yet. Or, for something hypothetical, the Senate could pass a resolution that the Patriot Act was unconstitutional, and then people would be surprised but otherwise nothing would have changed.

I don't see how that's different than it is for the courts. If Justice Scalia writes a book describing his theory of constitutional interpretation and how he thinks specific cases should have come out, that doesn't mean anything the same as an individual Senator's speech or a Congressional resolution doesn't mean anything.

>Also, Congress could repeal the Patriot Act, saying it was unconstitutional, on Monday and enact it again on Tuesday without mentioning constitutionality and give any reasons they want or no reasons.

So can the Supreme Court. For example, Plessy v. Ferguson has since been overruled. Conversely, the modern interpretation of the commerce clause is a lot broader than it was prior to the New Deal. Granted the court is supposed to give a reason, but they don't actually have to, and in many cases the "reason" is just that they now disagree with the previous precedent (and the real reason is often that different people are now on the Court).

>Or, I can say something's unconstitutional and so can you and so can anyone, but when the Supreme Court says so, it really sticks. To me, this is a difference in kind.

I don't see how you're distinguishing this from when Congress "says so" by enacting legislation or the president "says so" through an executive order. Obviously they have to do so in their official capacity and (for Congress) have a majority in agreement, but so does the court.

How old are you? You seem extremely young from everything you're writing. Probably still in school getting actively brain washed by the school system about how the US works.

>The US is somehow a naive country (for no good reason) with more money than wisdom about 'foreign adventures'.

They are not, not even a little. They simply do not care about anyone or anything other than american interests. They don't do the things they do because they didn't realize it might cause an international incident. They simply don't care. They have the biggest military and biggest market, what is anyone going to do to them?

>As Churchill observed long ago, the US always does the right thing after trying everything else.

This quote points out that this is nothing new for the US. It will do the right thing if there is literally no other choice. But they are constantly working to make sure there will be other choices.

>If the US gets itself all bent out of shape over lives such as that of that young mother, then we will be chasing absurd 'foreign adventures' until we are white from loss of blood. To avoid this, we have to wise up.

This whole story is just common media manipulation. Make the enemy seem like barbarians so no one will look too deeply if we go to war with them.

>There's plenty of historical precedent where the US democracy worked.

And at least as many where it didn't.

>Recently SOPA and PIPA were close to passing. A lot of people in the tech community raised hell, and the bills went down in flames.

Haha, no. A lot of big companies put their lobby dollars behind a position and that position got adopted. No one in the US government cares about a bunch of blog posts, email or online surveys.

> etc. can have big effects, but in the end the voters know a lot about lying, duplicity, manipulation, etc. I believe that the Internet will be helping

No they don't! And even if they did, I'm not sure they can stop it (in the same way that knowing you're taking a placebo won't alter its effectiveness). It's getting more and more documented about just how effective marketing can be.

Some have gone so far as to ban certain kinds of advertising [1].

>it seems to have helped a lot with SOPA and PIPA and to have gotten the Snowden efforts front and center.

What? Outside of sites like HN, pretty much no one cares about Snowden. The mainstream press was already over him the next day.

>Once a politician gives a speech, then due to YouTube the politician can't assume that the voters will easily forget.

Except they do forget, and sites like political compass help them forget by trying to look official but producing padded stats. You can probably find every one of Obama's speeches on youtube yet there are still people who claim he hasn't broken any big promises.

[1] http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/ban-on-adverti...