"'We the people' are the boiling frog, and the water has started to boil."

by: Solomon L. Wisenberg

The wonderful John Wesley Hall concisely explains, at Welcome to the Fourth Amendment.com, the decades-long erosion of our Fourth Amednment rights, at the hands of the Supreme Court and a succession of do-nothing Congresses. No surprises here, as Hall laments: 

"What is Congress doing? Essentially nothing. Proposing a law with great fanfare is meaningless if it goes nowhere. I wrote my Senators about email privacy, so I figure they don’t care since they never wrote back. So, I haven’t bothered to write to them about Sen. Paul’s bills. Congress is too mired in gamesmanship to do their damned jobs of actually legislating in the public interest."

***

"Now, what are we going to do about it? Complain, but sit on or wring our hands and do nothing?"

Hat Tip to NACDL's tireless weekend warrior, Ivan J. Dominguez, for sending this out. Similar points were made on Friday by the inimitable Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice in Seize It All And Trust the Government To Sort IT Out:

"Yet all the hand-wringing interest today will fade and we will elect the same men and women to power to continue to re-enact the same laws that allow the government to do such things to its own people, and presidents who believe so strongly in their own exceptionalism that they can be trusted with our personal data even though the other team could never be."

Cheery thoughts for a Sunday afternoon.

(wisenberg)