Amendment number 4

I know that the blogosphere is and has been all over the topic of the NSA's giganto list of our phone bills, and some would say that no more need be said about it, but damn it, you know, what are blogs for if not for saying one more thing about something that everyone is already talking about. Particularly, I looked up the actual text of the 4th amendment and found it to be really beautiful in the way that it gets right to the heart of what this issue is about- exactly why and how the power of the state to search us and arrest us needs to be limited. Those folks that started our country were smart, smart folks i tell ya-- check it out:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, (surely this should be read to include email, phone calls too) against unreasonable ('cause i said so' is not a good reason, it is unreasonable-- what did the founding fathers consider unreasonable? Despite our future CIA chief's statements to the contrary there is some further description coming right here that fills us in, here it comes...) searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue (see they thought there should be warrants! Assumed it actually, it sounds like) , but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation (This is my favorite part right now-- This means -i think---any lawyers out there want to disagree with me?-- that some ACTUAL PERSON - needs to take responsibility for the evidence that supports the idea that this search needs to be done. This way if the government ends up searching, like for example, the office of the president's political opponents or the phone calls of reporters who have blown the whistle on the governments other illegal activity, there is someone to be held accountable for that. If you can search people without saying why, it opens up the possibility for all kinds of abuses) , and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized (particular as in you can't get a warrant that says search every damn phone record of every American because that's not 'particular' -- is it? And if what they're doing now is data-mining maybe we should change the law to say that it might be ok to collect huge amounts of data if you're doing it above board- and within the law, but then if you're going to do some kind of query against that data- the query or the pattern recognition system or whatever constitutes a search-- and needs to be warranted by a judge -- even a secret judge like the FISA court allows for-- someone, somewhere needs to be looking over the shoulder of the people doing the searching or its going to be abused- its just is- its human nature).