A powerful man sleeping with a younger woman outside the bounds of matrimony may not be uncommon, but when revealed, it inevitably produces a scandal. In the case of the adultery revelations about former CIA Director David Petraeus, however, the banal, tawdry sex scandal is masking a much deeper one. A great deal of intimate personal information has been revealed to the public based on an FBI investigation, despite a rather notable lack of underlying activity that can plausibly be called criminal. There's no particular reason anybody but David Petraeus's wife should care about his sexual improprieties, but we should all care about how easy it is for government officials and employers to invade the privacy of online communications.

On March 7, 1965, peaceful protesters advocating for the right to vote were brutally attacked by Alabama authorities. A little more than a week later, President Lyndon Johnson declared in a message to Congress that "experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books ... can ensure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it." LBJ subsequently introduced legislation that would provide an effective right to vote, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. Less than 50 years later, the Supreme Court appears poised to cut out the heart of one of the greatest triumphs of the civil-rights movement.