THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

You go to one court and the judge says it's unconstitutional. Then you go to another court and the judge says NSA snooping on the entire populace is legal. What's a country to do? In the case of the United States v The Constitution it will go to the Supreme Court.

In a statement, the ACLU, which brought the lawsuit after former NSA leaker Edward Snowden brought the program to light, said it would appeal the case.

“We are extremely disappointed with this decision, which misinterprets the relevant statutes, understates the privacy implications of the government’s surveillance and misapplies a narrow and outdated precedent to read away core constitutional protections,” said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU deputy legal director.

Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said the government is “pleased the court found the NSA’s bulk telephony metadata collection program to be lawful.

President Barack Obama suggested last week that he could make significant changes to the government’s vast surveillance programs, including the contentious mass collection of phone records. He said he will make a “definitive statement” about the programs next month after considering his options during a two-week family vacation in Hawaii.

Obama could administer some of the recommendations through executive actions, but others would require approval from a divided Congress, where support for NSA changes does not fall strictly along party lines.

Rep. Peter King, chairman of Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterintelligence & Terrorism, called today’s decision "a victory for the patriotic men and women of the NSA" and "preserves a vital weapon for the United States in our war against international terrorism."

In a 53-page opinion, U.S. District Judge William Pauley said Friday the legality of the phone records program is “ultimately a question of reasonableness” under the Fourth Amendment and is a valid government response to try to eliminate the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

You see, it is utterly reasonable for the phone data of every person, everywhere, to be collected because of a few hundred murderous thugs. And you know what that makes you if you believe the Constitution prevents the government from doing whatever it damn well pleases with you and everything about you, don't you?