The more fear confrontational activism can put into the heart of the political class, the better.

Revealingly, the central function of the Constitution as law--the supreme law--was to impose limitations not on the behavior of ordinary citizens but on the federal government. The government, and those who ran it, were not placed outside the law, but expressly targeted by it. Indeed, the Bill of Rights is little more than a description of the lines that the most powerful political officials are barred from crossing, even if they have the power to do so and even when the majority of citizens might wish them to do so.

When someone who wields political power does something you dislike or disagree with, it's incumbent upon you to object, criticize, and demand a different course. Those who refuse to do so are abdicating the most basic duty of citizenship and rendering themselves impotent.

It's so much easier to debate people when you can pretend that they hold moronic position that they don't actually believe.

Whether a country is actually free is determined not by how well-rewarded its convention-affirming media elites are and how ignored its passive citizens are but by how it treats its dissidents, those posing authentic challenges to what the government does.

The key question: will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes.

The government usually announces it killed a Big Terrorist 5 or 6 different times before they're dead - they're almost like cats.