In a major vindication for Edward Snowden -- and a blow for the national security policy pursued by Republicans and Democrats alike -- the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Thursday that the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program is unlawful.  This is the most serious blow to date for the legacy of the USA Patriot Act and the surveillance overreach that followed 9/11.The central question depended on the meaning of the word "relevant": Was the government's collection relevant to an investigation when it collects all the metadata for any phone call made to or from anywhere in the U.S.?The court said no. That was the right decision -- not so much because it protects privacy, as because it broke the bad precedent of secret law created by the NSA and endorsed by the secret national security court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Inaction can fracture alliances. Inaction can empower dictators and provoke terrorists and enflame regional conflicts. Inaction can slaughter innocent people and create millions of refugees. We have the horrific proof in Syria, where Barack Obama’s infamous “red line” has been painted over in blood.....Social psychology documented the “bystander apathy effect” in the 1960s, a phenomenon in which the more people who witness a crisis together, the less likely any one of them is to help. Studies showed that while 70 percent of people alone will help a stranger in distress, the number drops to 40 percent when other people are in the room. Inaction is not only deadly, it’s contagious, and it applies to nations as well as to individuals.The solution to this sort of paralysis on a nation-state level is to have strong global institutions and treaties that are binding and clear. For example, an agreement between countries to guarantee mutual defense or an organization that is bound to intervene to stop a genocide. In theory, contractual commitments and shared moral obligations will override the bystander effect. In practice, the fear of taking action is so strong that the leaders of the free world find excuse after excuse to ignore their commitments and their values.These excuses range from feigned ignorance to legalistic pedantry to rhetorically reducing the national and international interests that must be protected. Hundreds of thousands slaughtered in Rwanda? We didn’t know. The Budapest Memorandum guarantees Ukrainian territorial integrity? Check the fine print, we’re technically not bound to defend them. Russian jets are crossing into Turkish territory? The North Atlantic Treaty Organization begs member nation Turkey not to invoke the mutual defense clause. Iraq and Syria are exploding into civil war? It’s a Middle Eastern problem. The civil wars are churning out terrorist groups and refugees reaching the West? It’s a European problem. Islamic State sympathizers killed 14 people in San Bernardino, the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11? Our anti-IS strategy is the right one.Obama and his fellow neo-isolationists are well aware that few are condemned and fewer are convicted of having the power to prevent a tragedy but refusing to do so, while a single death resulting from intervention will be denounced. A quarter-million deaths, a dozen terror attacks, a million refugees, these are politically acceptable consequences of inaction, but a single casualty from action, even attempting to prevent those horrors, is considered politically unacceptable.

Cruz is a Christian who takes his religion (semi) seriously. And I certainly understand why people of reason distrust a politician who believes there is “a guy in the sky” to whom we owe faith and obedience. All manner of irrational and life-throttling ideas can follow (and have followed) from that fantasy.But Ted Cruz is not a theocrat. In the realm of politics, he recognizes that the U.S. Constitution takes precedence over his religion. As he puts it:

My faith is an integral part of who I am. I’m a Christian, and I’m not embarrassed to say that. I’m not going to hide that and treat it like something you can’t admit publicly. . . .But I also think that those in politics have an obligation not to wear their faith on their sleeve. There have been far too many politicians who run around behaving like they’re holier than thou. My attitude as a voter, when some politician stands up and says “I’m running because God told me to run” [a veiled reference to Marco Rubio], my reaction is “Great, when God tells me to vote for you we’ll be on the same page.”I’m not asking for your vote because of my personal faith. . . . I’m asking you to vote for me because I’ve spent a lifetime fighting to defend the Constitution and Bill of Rights, fighting to defend the American free enterprise system. And we need a leader who will stand up every day and protect the rights of everyone, whether they’re Christians or Jews or Muslims or anyone else. The Bill of Rights protects all Americans. It protects atheists. That’s the beauty of the Bill of Rights. . . . The Constitution and the Bill of Rights [embody] a unifying principle that can bring us together across faiths, across races, across ethnicities—and we need to come together behind the unifying principles that built America.

Cruz is far from flawless. But he is by far the best viable candidate running for president today.We don’t get to dream up a flawless candidate and make him real. We have to choose among the actual alternatives, or enter a protest vote, or choose not to vote. Those are our only alternatives.Given the foregoing facts, Cruz is the clear-cut best choice for America.