Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
FoxNews.com
8/9/2012
Gazillions. That’s the number of times the federal government has spied on Americans since 9/11 through the use of drones, legal search warrants, illegal search warrants, federal agent-written search warrants and just plain government spying. This is according to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who, when he asked the government to tell him what it was doing to violate our privacy, was given a classified briefing. The senator — one of just a few in the U.S. Senate who believes that the Constitution means what it says — was required by federal law to agree not to reveal what spies and bureaucrats told him during the briefing…
…The point here is terrifying. If the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, how can it do things to us to which we have not consented? And when it does these things — like send a drone over your back yard to learn who is coming to your Saturday barbeque or to see what fertilizer you are using in your vegetable garden or to take a peek into your living room or bedroom — and when the laws the government has written prevent our elected representatives from telling us what it is doing, we are at the doorsteps of tyranny. The government gave Paul the distinct impression that it was afraid of our exercise of our personal freedoms, and thus it needs to watch us as we do so. This is the same government whose stated principal purpose is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and thus personal freedom.
What has become of the Jeffersonian value of the primacy of the individual over the government in a free society? How have we lost the American value that the government works for us, and we don’t work for the government? What remains of the constitutionally guaranteed right to be left alone?…
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