An interpretation of the word "reasonable" is literally all discussions of the 4th Amendment have ever come down to, you can't pretend like someone with a narrower scope or "reasonableness" is just haggling over semantics and nitpicking tiny details.
My point is that he's arguing about precisely where the line should be drawn, not offering an example of the police engaging in clearly unreasonable conduct. You can't claim that the 4th amendment has fallen by the wayside just because you disagree about precisely where the courts have drawn the lines in edge cases. You need some stronger evidence than that.
But those companies are both American, aren't they? Regardless, I feel like the ceiling for outrage and/or concern has reached its ceiling, at least among foreign governments who can at least do a semblance of something about it, since it's way more important which companies are used the most than the nations from which the companies in question originate, and the NSA has the data of all the most popular internet companies in the world.
It's not because we have more information, it's that THEY have a lot more information. The amount of our lives that we divulge to or involve the internet has shot up exponentially, certainly since the 1990s but when you think about it, even since, say 2000-2005.
I've never understood the mentality that leads to homeschooling. When so many people are terrified at becoming parents/at being new parents because they've just been entrusted with a life and they're afraid to screw up, where do parents find the confidence in themselves to believe that they should be responsible for the totality of a child's exposure to other people and knowledge? At least a school experience allows for new ideas, experiences, role models, and environments.
E: Not to disrespect any parents who have decided to homeschool, of course. I was homeschooled before I was old enough to start preschool, and my brother was homeschooled for a year during, I think, middle school. It's a decision my own parents made, too, for a period.
For my parents and many of their friends the primary motivation was along this line of thinking. I'm not saying this is a totally fair or accurate line of thought but it is the line of thinking that leads one to decide to homeschool.
I can take my child's education into my own hands and probably make a few mistakes along the way but at least I care deeply about my child and have a trusting relationship with my child. Children are resilant and the real things a child should learn through K-12 has more to do with character, the ability to learn, follow-through, complete a problem, read for comprehension, etc... Things that don't require a degree or certificate to effectively teach.
Alternatively, I can trust their education to the State, to underfunded schools, to teachers (some of whom are great but some of whom are in place purely because of a broken system) who may care a little bit but have to split their care and attention between 20-80 other kids none of whom are their own, to an educational system which has long been optimized in the wrong directions and for the wrong reasons.
Personally, I don't think that public school is worthless, I just think there are plenty of benefits to homeschooling that are well worth considering. Even just removing the in-effeciencies that have to exist in a system like public school, frees up so much time and energy for self-exploration, additional time to focus on things like music and technology which are underemphasized in a school "system". Additionally, if the parents do a good job of exposing their kids to an appropriate amount of socialization it removes some of the distraction of the constant social element in a school system. AKA, it's easier to focus on learning when you aren't distracted by the bully sitting behind you or the cute girl across from you. For me, I just hung out with the bully and cute girl after I was done learning.
I do think some mix of learning with social is good but there are plenty of ways to do that, again in more ideal ratios.
Experience with the public schools is what has made me consider homeschooling my daughter. Her first grade teacher had terrible communication skills, seemed constantly stressed, and there was a huge focus on standardized testing this year which led to lots of repetition of skills students had already mastered (this was the area's honors magnet school). My daughter was bored and eventually uncooperative. I honestly feel she could have learned more studying only an hour a day at home.
On the other hand, the kids in her class were terrific on those occasions where they were given a chance to interact, and the school also had an arts class rotation that she loved. But if next year is much like this year, it's going to be a tough call.
For us it was the realization that our kids did a ridiculous amount of learning before age 4 without school, and we thought free of the distractions of school and prescribed, regimented curriculum, they could continue at that pace.
As someone who was also homeschooled in Georgia (but was in the city of Atlanta), I don't really understand how most parents seem to believe that educating their children isn't their sole responsibility.
Sure, their kids' teachers are supposed to expose them to knowledge but the parents are ultimately responsible.
Perhaps one of the most important lessons I learned (other than how to teach myself) was the idea of personal responsibility.
That probably messed me up for life since now I'm fairly libertarian and also kept going to school until I got my PhD, but that's a different story.
A SCOTUS decision IS binding to Congress. They can't pass a law doing something that has been deemed unconstitutional unless they first amend the Constitution to explicitly allow them to do that same thing, which is obviously not going to happen.
Actually, Congress can pass any law they damn well please. It's not until the courts deal with it that an unconstitutional law (in the opinion of a court interpreting law and precedent) can be thrown out.
My original post was operating under the assumption that all branches would abide by the legitimate actions of the other branches. Grandparent is pointing out that sometimes this doesn't happen. Always a possibility, but not something I expect to see very often.
Nope, the Founders were ... supremely suspicious of the Federal court system they were creating (e.g. lifetime tenure is double edged blade) and explicitly allowed the Congress to override it. Wikipedia has this under the words of art jurisdiction stripping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping
A SCOTUS decision is supposed to be binding to whatever act HAD been passed. Whether that happens in effect is entirely dependent on the (usually) executive branch complying with the SCOTUS ruling. Congress can, if it wanted, re-pass the law. Obviously, it would make a subsequent suit and overturning easier, but in reality, it can, and has happened in the past.
Oh, right. Congress can repass it, but provided the Executive branch respects the function and decision of the judiciary, the Supreme Court does have the final say over congressional acts that have been challenged.
There are two types of decisions made by SCOTUS. In the first type, they rule on Constitutional grounds, in which case it is binding to Congress. In other cases they simply rule on the interperatation of laws themselves; so if Congress changes said laws, the ruling becomes irrelevent. The law in question here is 'interesting' in the sense that it tells the court how to interpret the Constitution. If it ever gets brought up before SCOTUS, my guess would be they would deem the law unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress cannot tell them how to interpret the Constitution. Granted, they would need to find something in the Constitution (or precedent) that says this, but I suspect that would be relativly simple.
