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FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

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Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#61

I'm sure it would end badly, but sometimes I fantasize about the U.S. citizens having a LEO that actively investigates / prosecutes government officials who violate the constitution.

We could get really far simply by changing the incentives of our legal system.

Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#62

I'm sure it would end badly, but sometimes I fantasize about the U.S. citizens having a LEO that actively investigates / prosecutes government officials who violate the constitution.

I would prefer a government that investigates all the bad acts of LEOs. I would prefer a government that investigates the rich. I would prefer a government that investigates wage theft.

I would prefer a government that enforces the law blindly. Our legal system is fundamentally broken as long as we consider wealth, career, politics, personal connections, etc before filing charges and trying a case.

Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be good, right up until it itself becomes as corrupted as the entities is prosecutes. The problem is that 'unconstitutional' is in the eye of the beholder. Take for example the classic "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.". Does this mean all gun control laws are unconstitutional or does it mean th…

First off, you are too late for any comment about the text to hold any water. 2008 Heller and 2010 McDonald settled that. It is an individuals right to keep and bear, not collective, never was. One term that came from Heller was “dangerous and unusual”, make note of the and. Next, well regulated never meant lots of regulations. It meant well trained and in good working order. 1800s Oxford dictionary.

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Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#64
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, you are too late for any comment about the text to hold any water. 2008 Heller and 2010 McDonald settled that. It is an individuals right to keep and bear, not collective, never was. One term that came from Heller was “dangerous and unusual”, make note of the and. Next, well regulated never meant lots of regulations. It meant well trained and in good working order. 1800s Oxford dictionary.

"Settled" does not mean what you think it means. There are good arguments that recent jurisprudence is not even justified from an Originalist perspective. This is neither the time nor place, but your confidence is unfounded.

"Settled" means that it's never, ever going to change, because the composition of the court isn't going to change. At least not during my lifetime, and probably not yours.

It doesn't matter whether it's "justified". The Constitution means what five people on the Court say it means. And if that comes from talking to James Madison on the ouija board, the rest of us have to live with it.

In that sense, it's "settled". And our daily school shootings are just a fact that we have to accept.

Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#65
post #58
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or does it mean that gun control laws are implicit in what it means to be a 'A well regulated Militia' People who use this argument are disingenuous because they wouldn't argue the same thing about press being limited to printing presses or speech being limited to the spoken word.

Perhaps because "the press" means journalism in general any way you cut it and you need to be very disingenuous to say otherwise as the spirit of the terms is obvious. Whereas "well regulated militia" absolutely doesn't mean "random redneck with a gun fetish" - the spirit is also obvious here.

People say the second amendment was made in the era of muskets so obviously an automatic rifle isn't what the founders were talking about While the first amendment was made in the era of newspapers, so obviously the right to speech doesn't extend to Telegrams, Radio, TV, or Digital communication

Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#66
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, you are too late for any comment about the text to hold any water. 2008 Heller and 2010 McDonald settled that. It is an individuals right to keep and bear, not collective, never was. One term that came from Heller was “dangerous and unusual”, make note of the and. Next, well regulated never meant lots of regulations. It meant well trained and in good working order. 1800s Oxford dictionary.

The way the Court current works its just settled until the next turn over in court make up.

The court make-up isn't expected to change for decades. The previous President appointed three young members who will be there for a very long time, adding to three existing members. It will be many, many years before the composition of the court is likely to shift significantly.

Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#67
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Settled" does not mean what you think it means. There are good arguments that recent jurisprudence is not even justified from an Originalist perspective. This is neither the time nor place, but your confidence is unfounded.

You are allowed to be mad at a ruling you cannot change. Just don’t drag me into your feelings. Maybe it is overruled someday, that’s pretty rare. Maybe you can point to another amendment that made it almost 250 before being interpreted to say something, it does not?

I'm not mad at all. I have no feelings on the issue whatsoever, honestly.

But you're also wrong if you think there's meaningful precedent.

And BTW the entire Bill of Rights is the same age. All are subject to interpretation by the sitting Court.

...

FWIW, I would place 2A lowest on my list of important entries in the BoR though. They're all important because if one is threatened then they are all threatened, but I think 2A is probably net-harmful in the current world. If there was an A/B test, with and without, I'd choose without.

2A has transformed from this vaguely self-protective/deterministic right into this bizarro testament to machismo and the absurd idea that carrying makes one safer from fellow humans, and the frankly asinine idea that it's insurance against government overreach. The statistics, and clear thinking, prove otherwise. Are you that guy? Don't be that guy.

Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#68
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s insincere. Even if you truly believe a catastrophe may happen you may not be willing to risk life in prison because the President doesn’t like your bosses boss.

You really think in that case they'd be bound by the President's likes and dislikes? If the President or whatever court didn't let them out, there would be riots in the streets.

Nope, most successfully stopped attacks are secret. Nobody would even know.

Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#69
post #41

A clarification, because I'm seeing a lot of misunderstanding: This is about whether or not the FBI needs a warrant to see information that was already collected legally by another part of the gov't. This is not about whether or not the gov't can collect this specific data in the first place, everyone involved seems to agree they do.

Correct. There is a strong dividing line between those two organizations, resulting from some very bad misbehavior by the FBI and CIA in the 1950s and 60s. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was set up to allow some agencies to collect information on non-Americans using techniques they'd never allow on citizens, while other agencies can use a more restricted set of techniques on Americans.

After 9/11 they breached that somewhat, because of a (not entirely well-founded) belief that the separation kept them from preventing the attack.

Those are the two ends of the spectrum being debated here: harassing Martin Luther King on the one side, and 9/11 on the other. No compromise is going to make everybody happy. In fact, no matter what, it's going to make everybody mad.

Re: FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections

#70
post #64
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Settled" does not mean what you think it means. There are good arguments that recent jurisprudence is not even justified from an Originalist perspective. This is neither the time nor place, but your confidence is unfounded.

"Settled" means that it's never, ever going to change, because the composition of the court isn't going to change. At least not during my lifetime, and probably not yours. It doesn't matter whether it's "justified". The Constitution means what five people on the Court say it means. And if that comes from talking to James Madison on the ouija board, the rest of us have to live with it. In that sense, it's "settled". A…

> "Settled" means that it's never, ever going to change, because the composition of the court isn't going to change. At least not during my lifetime, and probably not yours.

I am confident that the composition of the court will change, during my lifetime. I suspect yours as well.

FWIW, I do have a strong opinion on school shootings, of course. I am not comfortable with the assertion that there's something uniquely broken about Americans that means we can't have RTKBA. But if there is, I'm not confident that eliminating 2A would resolve the real problem.

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