in any event dye casting or casting the dye makes no sense at all and with all due respect to PrivatePig, the idea the expression commonly used for an irrevocable decision has anything to do with printing is pure BS.

Ha, I said “tool.”

heheheheheh.

NFW. Many people think this expressiion is related to die casting (a metal template molding process). The origin of the expression is much older. Its from
Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon river. The “die” is a gambling die, and “cast” means thrown. The
phrase means “An irrevocable decision has been made. Doesn’t anyone take Latin anymore?

Whether or not tapping a phone call is an invasion of privacy is sort of moot. There are lots of times when the government surely has a right to invade your privacy, so that cannot, alone, be the standard. The question is: where do we draw the line – when does the invasion become too much?

When they are listening to phone calls of would-be terrorists, that’s on the “OK” side of the line.

However, it really irks me when people (not even you necessarily) name drop the 4th Amendment as a blanket cover to whatever their agenda might be. Even if the Supreme Court declares FISA constitutional (which I have my reservations considering the 4 dissenting votes in the Heller opinion), then the rhetoric will become that the COURTS now don’t know anything about the 4th Amendment, not just the President.

Because of the national nature of the telecom industry, this might fall under the Feds Commerce power, but my knowledge of Con law is really shaky when it comes to that area so I can not say for certain. With Stevens first deciding on his ruling and then working backwards to come up with reasoning, you might even end up being right.

But, I assume that your conception of “right to privacy” is about the unreasonable search and seizure. I guess we will have to agree to disagree on what is exactly a “reasonable” search. Personally, I think that if you are Muslim, any investigation is reasonable, including questioning you with a baseball bat, making you form pyramids with your fellow terrorists, covering you in pork rinds, and making mean dogs bark at you, but I am sure that there are plenty of people on the Right that would still disagree with me. I am certainly not prejudiced against Muslims, I am saying that I believe them when they say that they want all of us dead. I think that they are honest about that.

As far as the 10th, are you saying that if the states (instead of the Fed) passed legislation saying that it was okay to tap your phone without a warrant, that you are cool with that? Because in my limited understanding of legal stuff, it seems that the political climate that we have now, the ACLU and their ilk have taken to slashing apart state legislation on anything that they find disagreeable. Including not killing child rapists.

And Phil…What did I say that makes you think I’m a Democrat? Honestly, what did I say? Was it my defense of the 4th Amendment or, my veiled attempt to say the 10th Amendmend makes clear the Feds don’t have this much power. I.E.States Rights. …Now again, did I say anything slightly Leftist?

By the, I’m a Libertarian, who once was a proud Republican.

“…That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.” – M.O.

…or maybe not.

Heh.