[miked]

> Alito concurring...That's very interesting language coming from conservative Chief Justice Roberts.

Your implication seems to be that conservatives are the ones pushing weak privacy laws. I'll grant that many conservatives have been weak on privacy protection, which is one of the reasons that I'm a libertarian. But the primary parties arguing here for nearly unlimited cell phone search were "The Obama administration and the state of California, both of which sought to justify cell phone searches...".

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/25/supreme-cour...

Not to mention that it was Bill Clinton who was behind the appalling push to expand no-knock raids by police for drug busts.

Even for pot smokers who didn't inhale.

[rayiner]

That's not my implication at all. My point is simply that it's rare, for obvious reasons, for conservatives to invoke changes in the world as justification for, well anything.

[nathan_long]

"Conservative" generally means "skeptical of change". So it depends on how you look at it. I'd call myself conservative, and I want to conserve my 4th Amendment rights as I move from carrying papers to carrying digital data.

So you can say "the world has changed and now we have to protect cell phones" to say it's a progressive position, or "people still carry information and the government still can't search it without a warrant" to say it's a conservative one.

[_bfhp]

"Conservative" refers to the vague party/ideology that more smoothly (than "liberalism", that is) allows for-profit coroprations to co-opt the government to achieve the regulatory situation for maximal wealth accumulation. It refers to nothing else. To pretend otherwise is to further facilitate the maximal wealth accumulation.

[nl]

Not only is that unhelpful, it's also untrue. It doesn't capture the goals of the tea party movement for example.

It's true the outcomes of conservative ideology are often what you say, but that doesn't make it a goal anymore than the fact that there are welfare cheats makes cheating on welfare a goal of progressive politics.

[_bfhp]

"It doesn't capture the goals of the tea party movement for example." It doesn't have to, it just has to "capture" the reason that the movement gained popularity over any other movement. Theories explain why phenomena occur, it doesn't matter if the people who are part of the phenomena disagree.

[nathan_long]

Is there an adjective you use as (obviously incomplete) shorthand for your political viewpoints? Because I'm sure it could be similarly redefined using only its negative outcomes.

[_bfhp]

No, there isn't.

[nolok]

It seems to be less a democrat/conservative than a executive/legislative thing

Those in power want to expand that power. I'm not in the US and we have the same here.