The State Of The Authoritarian Union

What if the state of the union is a mess? What if the government spies on all of us all of the time and recognizes no limits to its spying? What if its appetite for acquiring personal knowledge about all Americans is insatiable? What if the government uses the microchips in our cellphones to follow us and listen to us as we move about?

What if the Constitution expressly prohibits the government from doing this? What if the government has written laws that are interpreted in secret by judges who meet in secret and are applied by federal agents who operate in secret and their secret behavior doesn’t even resemble what the laws say they can do?

What if the feds have seized the content of every text message, email, mobile and landline telephone call, utility bill, credit card bill and bank statement of everyone in America for the past four years? What if no law has authorized them to capture this? What if when asked by members of Congress, in public and under oath, high-ranking officials, at least one with ribbons on his chest and stars on his shoulders, lied about what the government is doing?

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