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A comment on NSA Phone Snooping Cannot Be Challenged in Court, Feds Say. Parent comment

Re:NSA Phone Snooping Cannot Be Challenged in Court, Feds Say by igravious on Friday July 19, 2013 @09:38PM (#6073965)
This is a stinking remnant from a time we should have put behind us when we transitioned from monarchies to republics. Of the course the fucking king is going to say that the king is immune, the fucking king had a divine right to rule. But we consent ourselves to be governed and we are not divine. This sovereign immunity has to go. How can there be checks and balances if the fucking judiciary cannot be used by the people to rein in the other branches?

This all reminds me of that game we play as kids. Tag, you're it. Except when you get to the base. Then you can't be it. It's fine in a bloody kids game but not in real life. If the game is rigged, you stop playing the game. I'm not advocating revolution, just deprecating the rules that make the playing field totally not level.

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Re:NSA Phone Snooping Cannot Be Challenged in Court, Feds Say by ericssmith on Friday July 19, 2013 @10:57PM (#6074173)
This is akin to the argument Thomas Paine made in "Common Sense" http://bit.ly/168gJkB that fired up the colonists in early 1776. "We consent ourselves to be governed" and if we select one or more among us to carry out our business, those folks don't have rights that the rest of us don't.

However, even at the time, there were "elites" among the colonists who wouldn't have agreed. And so its been ever since. The rhetoric of a democratic republic used to sway and motivate regular folks in order to protect the power and interests of a few.

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Re:NSA Phone Snooping Cannot Be Challenged in Court, Feds Say by gohrt on Friday July 19, 2013 @11:32PM (#6074232)
The Courts answer to that concern is: If you don't like the Executive, pick a better President.

Ultimately, this is a systemic problem, and it's not clear it's even possible for a small number of people to fix.

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Re:NSA Phone Snooping Cannot Be Challenged in Court, Feds Say by jacques_chester on Friday July 19, 2013 @10:20PM (#6074077)
Indeed, in those places which kept the Crown, the Crown's immunity has often been abolished or heavily modified.
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