Principles vs. Political Realities

Glen Greenwald has an excellent post on the argument made so often that he doesn't understand the realities of practical politics. He replies that there is a misunderstanding of what he does, that he tends to write about issues of principle which are enshrined in the law, and about which there SHOULDN'T be compromises or we will not be a nation in which, as Thomas Paine put it, the king is the law.