The leak was an attempt to bolster the libertarian brand.

[JDPriestly]

200. One can yell fire in a theatre that is NOT on fire.

Actors do it all the time.

How can we claim that we have freedom of the press if the government tracks all the phone calls that reporters call as they investigate stories?

Our government is violating the Constitution with this program. I am sorry if you do not understand our Constitution or how it works.

But this program violates most of our rights, our most fundamental rights. We are not free as long as this surveillance continues.

At this moment, our government is not complying with our Constitution. That means it may not be a legitimate government.

The surveillance program has to stop and we have to return to constitutional government.

Sorry. I suggest that DUers who think I am wrong sign up for a course on constitutional law. This program chills speech, eviscerates the freedom of the press, and those are only two of the ways in which it violates our Constitution. There are more. It's a very serious matter. Please try to understand what I am saying. I am not trying to put you down. I am trying to explain to you the reality of the damage these programs do to the delicate balance of power and authority within our government.

We have a tri-partite system of government. That means that we have three branches as you may know -- the executive, the legislative and the judicial. With this program, the executive branch and track all the phone calls of all people working in or with the legislative branch. That means that legislators have not confidentiality, no privacy in their contacts with their constituents or other legislators or anyone, not even their own family members. The same is true of the judicial branch.

Knowledge, it is said, is power. And the executive has a degree of knowledge about the political and personal lives of members of the other two branches of government that gives the executive ultimate power to embarrass or indict or control members of the other two branches. Obama may or may not be using his ability to have that information. There is no way to know. But, just the fact that it exists hampers the ability of members of the other two branches to carry out their constitutional functions of oversight. It isn't a matter of whether there really is a situation in which a legislator fails to call a resource on an issue, say national defense. It is the fact that this program might cause a legislator to think twice before calling a resource that would tell the legislator the truth about a defense program that the administration does not want the legislator to know.

The only reason people are not very, very upset about it is that those people have not read enough history and/or enough about constitutional law, its origins, the concerns of the founders of our country, their historical perspective, etc. to understand that this program is an attack on the very structure and function and purpose of our Constitution and of our system of government.