> I am sure you meant well but I found your write-up somewhat scattered and lacking a logical conclusion supported by prior points. This is easy to do if one is

> I am sure you meant well but I found your write-up somewhat scattered and lacking a logical conclusion supported by prior points. This is easy to do if one is writing with passion. I've done it too. IANAL! But my 'point' is that there is a process of bringing cases, claims of unconstitutionality, to the SCOTUS and now that process has started. There will be the issue of a plaintiff having 'standing' to bring the case, but maybe now 120 million Verizon customers have such standing; if not, likely still Google does. At this point, someone's gotta have enough standing. Then the 'conclusion' is that in 1-2 years we will find out what the SCOTUS wants to do about what appear to be laws enabling serious violations of at least the Fourth Amendment. To respond to much of the discussion in this thread, I made a side point that it is the job of the SCOTUS to defend the Constitution and not to permit bending the Constitution so that the Executive branch can find it easier to go after bad guys. So, in particular, a lot of the discussion here about just how we will get the bad guys will mostly just be set aside during this process and mostly the SCOTUS will not be much influenced by that consideration. Sure, maybe some Admin lawyer can argue something about 'treason' or "the Constitution is not a suicide pact", but my guess is that the main issue will be just a simple, clear protection of at least the Fourth Amendment. SCOTUS is interested in defending the Constitution and not much interested in how to stop Boston wackos with pressure cookers. For a longer term 'conclusion', I pointed out that if after the SCOTUS decision the citizens still want NSA listening in on pillow talk, steamy e-mails, tracking people to their romantic meetings, etc., then we can try to amend the Constitution. > If your point is that we will ultimately be protected by the Supreme Court, I think you are wrong. No, in simplest terms the process has started; likely nothing can stop it; SCOTUS will make a decision, in all likelihood defending the Constitution; and then we will see where we stand. That this process will move inexorably to a solid (the other two branches won't argue with it) conclusion is, in the context of much of the discussion in this thread, quite significant: Or, we can discuss this and that issue and fine point and what if, but, still, this unstoppable process will move to its conclusion which promises to be quite meaningful. For being "protected", I see no alternative to the usual from Jefferson "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance". For Obamacare, I don't know what the legal status is or what cases have been decided. For me, my guess is just that Obamacare is so poorly designed that too soon so many people will be screaming bloody murder, especially appropriate in the context, that Congress will just repeal it. I don't think that Obamacare was ever a serious attempt to help the US healthcare system but just some political posturing -- Nancy had a really good time, a lot of fun. She had the smile of a Homecoming Queen. Now that she's had her good time, we can go back to reality. Obama? He knows nothing about Obamacare: How do we know? Because during his efforts at helping it pass, too soon he said things that were really dumb, got slapped down hard, and then just shut up. In particular, at one point the US College of Surgeons put out that what Obama said was "uninformed, misinformed, just plain wrong, and dangerous". And that caused Obama to shut up. One more point was, one of his tear jerk cases said that due to her existing bad health she couldn't get insurance. Nonsense: All she had to do was move to a state with 'community rating', e.g., as I've been told, NYS. Obama's interest in Obamacare was about political posturing, not healthcare. Also someone from Arkansas, maybe Bill Clinton, said that Arkansas had a program for people like her. If the IRS comes after many people, Obamacare will go down in flames. But for SCOTUS and Obamacare, that case is less clearly about the Constitution than the attack on the Fourth Amendment by grabbing all that Verizon data.