The legality has nothing to do with it, as it has been demonstrated over and over that law enforcement will employ methods that can charitably be described as "legally questionable" and then attempt to hide it (see stingray). What is stopping them is limitations imposed by the physical world - both in number of windows and the fact that laser mics don't work the way they're portrayed on television. This is the reason why digital key escrow is infinitely more dangerous than physical key escrow (like fire department lockboxes).
Second, as soon as Trump and Clinton are locked in (after the conventions), the Republicans will cave on Merrick Garland, rather than have Clinton nominate someone. The next Supreme Court justice is Merrick Garland, an Obama nominee.
This is a case where the more liberal justices tended towards an anti-fourth argument as long as the surveillance was done in a public place, and neither Obama nor Clinton have shown themselves to have a problem with universal surveillance that I'm aware of, in any case, ever.
I was going to say this is the devil they know, but in this case, it's actually the devil they've wanted.
Before the election, sure there is. The optimal course would be to wait until the elections happen (or at least until polling shows a clear advantage one way or another), then either approve Garland or refuse until Trump is inaugurated.
I'd disagree. The complete and absolute infatuation with surveillance by both the Bush's and the Clinton's is the same.
All I'm saying is 1) that the next person to appoint a Supreme Court justice, and the last person to appoint a Supreme Court justice, are both New Democrats who seem hostile to Fourth Amendment defences against surveillance, and 2) that the author of the opinion that protects us from total audio surveillance, and the fiercest defender of the Fourth in the Court is the one currently being replaced.
Take it as you will; I'm not hopeful at all, but there's nothing I can do about it anyway. I honestly believe that any justice that Emperor Trump would put on the court would be more likely to preserve that view than not, and the opposite would be true for any Clinton appointment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
On the other, I totally agree -- they both want to legislate morality.
On the gripping hand, I'm forced to wonder if there was a situation where conservatives started burning their garbage in their home, would liberals be OK with it? Or is the "gay sex in the home" thing only relevant because it happens to be the Republicans big fear?
assuming it were known but not spread, e.g. people proudly announced burn pits, but captured and buried their exhaust. That's the only way to torture this analogy into shape.
That is the false choice, also commonly found in the form "the lesser of two evils" or "the most electable".
> That's the only way to torture this analogy into shape.
I can think of a better one, better because it actually happened. An anarchist starts making a bunch of noise about how 3d printers enable individuals to produce extremely low quality guns in the privacy of their own homes. Liberals are outraged, propose legislation to ban such activity - then float the lead balloon of 3d printer technology regulation. Like the burning garbage analogy, externalities are used as justification for liberty curtailment, but unlike burning garbage - such externalities are not a certainty (in fact home firearm production has been legal for a very long time). The liberal's real beef is with the threat to the state's authority, the more often the state's regulations are sidestepped - the weaker it appears.
So the short answer is this: liberals, like conservatives, are fine with private activities that don't threaten their world views. Unfortunately liberals have a very detailed idea of the way the world should work, whereas the conservative imagination doesn't go much further than approved penis destinations.
Liberals are okay with private activities that don't hurt anyone, so they are okay with sexual activities. They think people own their own bodies, so they are okay with taking drugs like pot that don't hurt anyone; harder to say where the line goes with harder drugs. Burning trash in your backyard hurts the environment, and hurts people who live around you, so they are generally not okay with that.
Conservatives want to give you freedom to do what you want, and they say they want to be free to make choices. But of course they want things to be like they were in the past, so they don't like freedom to be gay or whatever. They hate the concept of global warming exists, I think because it leads to their actions might hurt others (like buying a gas guzzler). The problem really becomes apparent when conservatives deny science, in the earth is 8000 years old crowd, or the truly childish fantasy that 99% of scientists are only in it to make money and are happy to lie, that's why there's collusion about global warming.
Conservatives want to have a gun in their house if they want it. The liberals next door might say you are statistically more likely to accidentally shoot someone else or even your own family, so get rid of that to make us all safer - but this is more of a middle ground.
It's not about threatening my world views, I'm a liberal and that's all wrong. Liberals or progressive people want to learn and advance, they want to base their actions off of facts. Conservatives generally make their decisions based on ideology. I have changed my opinions on many things during my life, based on facts and my own experience. When I was a kid I didn't know any gay people, I wasn't sure what to think of them. As an adult, I'm sad to think of how they quietly suffered their whole lives. If cons were really operating based on facts, they'd not be so afraid of trans or gay people, because facts show there is nothing to be afraid of. Facts tell us about the conspiracy in the catholic church to hide predators - there's no international conspiracy to help trans people.
That can go without saying - did you really think that I was trying to comprehensively describe such complexity in less than a dozen sentences?
I think your characterization certainly adds more color, but you go wrong with "they want to base their actions off of facts". It would be more accurate, and succinct, to say "they are utilitarian". The goal is a world in which the maximum number of people enjoy the maximum number of "rights" (libs have a very different list of rights than the enumerated ones cons stick to). The utility to achieve that goal is the state. So it isn't fact based, it is much more "the end justifies the means". Your characterization of conservative thought as an "ideology" isn't inaccurate; with the exception of the logical defects introduced by religion - the ideology is a precept based bottom up approach, starting at individual rights. Whereas the liberal approach starts with the end goal and works backwards, which makes it much more likely to run roughshod over individuals - because the needs of the many...
Hopefully that helps you see my prior post as less "inaccurate" and more "I don't agree because feelings".
As I approach my mid-30s, I realize that both liberals and conservatives are so incredibly biased in their first-principles that the ideologies will never reconcile. I just wish both sides realize their differences arise from differing assumptions, not differing conclusions. (The conclusions of what is "right" are just opinions derived from assumptions.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyllo_v._United_States
edit: If you downvote, I'd appreciate you telling me why what I said is incorrect, instead of possibly reflexively reacting to the fact that Scalia is being mentioned in a positive way and Clinton in a negative way.