The highest taxes are on labor though. Taxes on capital gains in the US are far less than what is paid in labor taxes. Additionally, employers have to pay a tax on labor, which inevitably comes out of what is paid to employees (or restricts the number of employees hired).

The transaction took place in a US territory, giving the US courts jurisdiction.

Most people aren't concerned about the NSA looking at them right now. They're concerned about how this data may be used in the future should they suddenly find themselves with an administration which has a problem with their views on issue X and now has the means to identify all the people who have those particular views on issue X.

Or anyone targeted by McCarthy's hearings.

Then support a Constitutional Amendment that revokes the 9th. Otherwise, you're supporting the willful ignoring of a system that you may one day need to use. If it happens that someone is in power who doesn't like you (for whatever reason that may be, some petty, some not), they'll use the old justification that you supported saying the ends justify the means.

Apparently you have no problem with what McCarthy did, since that's exactly what you're attempting to justify.

The 9th, however, does guarantee a right to privacy.

Nowhere in the Constitution is the government granted a power that overrides privacy. Taken together, the 4th and 9th Amendments should guarantee that privacy is a right which may only be overridden by a warrant issued based on probable cause.

The government powers should be read as follows:
Order Deny, Allow
Deny from all
Allow powers as written in Constitution

Unfortunately, it's been re-interpreted as:
Order Allow, Deny
Allow from all
Deny as few powers as possible without causing a revolt

The 9th Amendment covers it quite well. Since the government is not granted an explicit power to infringe the right of privacy, it is a protected right.

A big part of the copyright problem is that copyright is now functionally a forever monopoly. Nothing entered the US public domain this last year.

Probable cause would require that they have reason to believe the phone was relevant to the accident. It has to be considered a relevant factor prior to the search. The 4th prohibits searches to determine if the thing searched is relevant. Relevant is a necessary precondition of probable cause.

Yeah, it would be a lot easier to deal with radical Tea Party types if they weren't so willing to allow their ideology to be co-opted by rapid pro-authoritarians. They're now little better than the far left extremists like ELF, though only the border Nazis and some militia groups have devolved into the type of domestic terrorists that make up ELF.

The CIA was, at one point, prohibited from spying on solely domestic targets.

That's apparently no longer the case. I am not sure if the prohibition was legal or by executive order, but I don't believe it was repealed in either event. Not that the government cares about such formalities anymore. If they get caught, they just pass a law retroactively forgiving those who were complicit in their crimes.

This is very true, and something most people miss whenever they are faced with an arena dominated by enormous amounts of money. It's not about the money, it's about the desire for power for those throwing truckloads of money into a particular arena.

If there's no power to be had, the money is usually clean and representative of the larger picture by all those involved.

It's too bad that people like you are a tiny minority among the screaming hordes of the scientifically illiterate and those who take everything "scientific" they read at face value.

It does, it just promotes different ideas on what is good for society. You could make the same statement about D and R, and each would say the other was not promoting the good of society where their views conflicted.