Thank you Ed, and thank you Rand

Thanks largely to Edward J. Snowden we learned about the massive NSA spying on every American, abrogating our 4th Amendment privacy rights. Until his revelations, America's spymasters continually lied that they weren't spying on all of us. And thanks largely to Sen. Rand Paul we have the USA Freedom Act, signed yesterday, which curtails some of the worst aspects of the Patriot Act regarding our loss of privacy.

What are the changes? The stor...age of bulk phone records shifts from the NSA to the phone companies, and the government must petition a special federal court for permission to search them. . A new kind of court order will permit the government to swiftly analyze them to ensure national security. In addition, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will finally be required to declassify some of its most significant decisions, and interested parties will be allowed to argue for privacy rights before the court in certain cases.

Both Snowden and Paul paid a price for their efforts on our behalf. Paul is now a pariah among the 18 other GOP presidential aspirants, who unlike Paul, relish relentless governmental snooping and military adventurism overseas. Snowden fared much worse. He's a refugee from an America that should treat him as a hero. If his government detractors could get their hands on him, he'd grow old in prison.