That is a red herring, Michael. The fact that everybody knows the government, and private contractors acting under color of law, are systematically violating the Fourth Amendment does not make it legal. It only makes the Attorney General's failure to prosecute those crimes unforgiveable, fully informed complicity. Likewise for Secretary Kerry's childish words yesterday about Edward Snowden. It is John Kerry who has betrayed his country, not Edward Snowden.

The NSA's illegal, unwarranted surveillance has never been shown to have prevented any violence, terrorism nor otherwise, and so exposing the NSA's criminal activity cannot have done any harm. Snowden only "undermined" criminal abuses of power which have never done anything to advance either domestic tranquility or the national defense. Although apologists for the NSA do appeal to your terror when they claim that illegal surveillance "keeps you safe," in fact there is not even a trade-off, as in the famous saying about trading our essential liberties for some temporary security, you scoundrel. We are not even getting more security in exchange. We are just being deprived of our right to be secure in our papers and effects, in exchange for nothing whatsoever.