Our federal government is operating unconstitutionally, far exceeding the limits placed on it by that document. It is behaving as a tyrant in so many ways it is practically innumerable. When the time comes (if such a time ever returns) that our federal government follows the limits and restrictions placed on it by the Constitution I will refrain from calling it a tyrant.

As for national security, I am suspicious whenever I hear that phrase used to cover the acts of the tyrant. There is some reasonable level of secrecy necessary for purposes of national security, but the amount of secrecy currently claimed by our government under that umbrella is too much. How can we be a self governing people if we are not allowed to know what our government is doing? Too many secrets, they must be peeled back. As the tyrant uses its weapons: the IRS, the NSA and CIA and FBI and other parts of its intelligence communities, the creation of so many laws that it is impossible for any person to be in compliance with them all, the need to peer behind the curtain of secrecy for the sake of regaining the power of the people to restrain the government outweighs the vast majority of the claims of need for secrecy. (In my humble opinion.)