Exactly, and on top of that most people actually do have something to hide, whether they realize it or not.[1]

Even setting aside crimes, there's plenty of things that happen in peoples' day-to-day lives that the government has absolutely no business even being aware of. It's not hard to imagine that they could collect vast troves of information on a person and then that information can get misused in any number of ways by rogue employees or by the government itself.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

In a country where the average professional commits "Three Felonies a Day" (http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...), you're damned right, "We have a lot of anxiety around people finding out our secrets" Basically, our normal lives exist at the sufferance of these "public servants".

Could you be a little more specific, and point me as specifics how they were "serious". Serious is District of Columbia v. Heller which Scalia wrote and was joined by the other two. The opinion acknowledged the traditional restrictions on gun possession. (My Google fu wasn't up to the task, e.g. "federalist society" Scalia OR Thomas felons possession gun or firearm, and limited in time to before Heller came out.)

Also, were they talking about the serious traditional felonies, vs. the Three Felonies a Day (http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...) that as the book description puts it, "The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day." ?

As for the preamble, it was a sop (in modern political terms, a blessed compromise) thrown to those who preferred militias to regulars; they lost that argument in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have Power ... To raise and support Armies...), in large part to the opinions of those like George Washington, who's professional opinion on this had particular weight.

He was again the indispensable man, without his influence the 1787 Constitution would have been a non-starter, but that said, the Bill of Rights was a condition by the Anti-Federalists for accepting it.

And in turn the Federalists were right when they said the Bill of Rights would just end up establishing high maximums to Federal power, as you acknowledge in your last sentence.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

If you can get hold of it, I recommend reading http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

Everybody is at risk for federal prosecution. Everybody.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/... http://www.threefelonies.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx

How about non-fiction?

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

Also read any of James Bovard's books; Lost Rights, Freedom in Chains, Feeling Your Pain, Terrorism and Tyranny, The Bush Betrayal, Attention Deficit Democracy, or Vin Suprynowicz books Send in the Waco Killers and Ballad of Carl Drega or his column on the Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com/columnists/Vin_Suprynowicz.html

Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

Yup, they create potential for abuse of power. They also erode trust in legislating bodies and the law in general.

See also: http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

There's an interesting book that I've read about, but haven't picked up yet, called "Three Felonies A Day". It discusses the selective enforcement of vague statutes and the incredible number of said statutes. http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...