The article begins with this question: "Do you have more personal liberty today than on the Fourth of July 2012?"
Regrettably, today we have the opposite of what the Framers gave us. Today we have a government that alone decides how much wealth we can retain, how much free expression we can exercise, how much privacy we can enjoy. And since the Fourth of July 2012, freedom has been diminished.
In the past year, all branches of the federal government have combined to diminish personal freedoms, in obvious and in subtle ways. In the case of privacy, we now know that the federal government has the ability to read all of our texts and emails and listen to all of our telephone calls -- mobile and landline -- and can do so without complying with the Constitution's requirements for a search warrant. We now know that President Obama authorized this, federal judges signed off on this, and select members of Congress knew of this, but all were sworn to secrecy, and so none could discuss it. And we only learned of this because a young former spy risked his life, liberty and property to reveal it.
