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President Obama Should Pardon Edward Snowden Before Leaving Office (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: Ever since Edward Snowden set in motion the most powerful public act of whistleblowing in U.S. history, he has been living in exile in Russia from the United States. An article in this week's New York Magazine looks at how Snowden may have a narrow window of opportunity where President Obama could pardon him before he leaves office. Presumably, once he leaves office, the chances of Snowden being pardoned by Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump are miniscule. Obama has said nothing in the past few years to suggest he's interested in pardoning Snowden. Not only would it contradict his national security policy, but it will severely alienate the intelligence community for many years to come. With that said, anyone who values a free and secure internet believes pardoning Snowden would be the right thing to do. The Verge reports: "[Snowden] faces charges under the Espionage Act, which makes no distinction between delivering classified files to journalists and delivering the same files to a foreign power. For the first 80 years of its life, it was used almost entirely to prosecute spies. The president has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all president before him combined. His Justice Department has vastly expanded the scope of the law, turning it from a weapon against the nation's enemies to one that's pointed against its own citizens. The result will be less scrutiny of the nation's most powerful agencies, and fewer forces to keep them in check. With Snowden's push for clemency, the president has a chance to complicate that legacy and begin to undo it. It's the last chance we'll have."
but ES won't be one
He'll have to pardon Hillary first
Presumably, once he leaves office, the chances of Snowden being pardoned by Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump are miniscule.
And what makes the chances of Snowden being pardoned by Obama non-miniscule?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The man deserves jail time. There are many more criminals on the Internet and he made public government secrets that compromise our security as well as gave terrorists insight on how to avoid being traced. Edward Snowden should be executed.
POTUS should do all sorts of things, according to many people. He should come clean about the alien reptile people. He should grab a bite to eat every now and then to keep his energy level up. He should pardon all the whistle blowers that were promised the most transparent administration in history.
Hillary won't pardon him if she wins, probably. Same reason.
Trump might. Just to spite Obama. Or not, because I doubt he gives a crap about Snowden (he's old news).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yea, if Obama had a son, he wouldn't look like Snowden. No pardon.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Whenever i see planted opinions masquerading as legitimate, organic thought, I cam't help but ask.
Snowden made a choice to go further than he should have. He could have become a whistle-blower, and had the protections provided by that, but instead, he chose to just release these documents out there. He clearly had a knowledge that he was violating the law, or he would not have fled the country when doing it.
A 'pardon' suggests that you've done something wrong but are being let of lightly because we are just that nice. Give the guy a damn medal.
Actually, since Trump has already spoken against Snowden, it seems more likely that Obama would pardon Snowden. Trump's nature is very unlikely to walk back on Snowden. However, Obama might not resist the urge to tweak a President elect Trump's nose by pardoning Snowden.
President Obama is many things, but on his list of top personal identities, I don't see any identity that would pardon Edward Snowden. I think he's a good man, and even a good president under the circumstances, but it ain't going to happen.
Just to clarify my analysis, let me pick the personal identity of "politician". I happen to think it might be Obama's #1 identity, but it's certainly near the top of his list. Pardoning Snowden would be extremely bad as a political move and would give enormous fuel and enthusiasm to his political enemies.
The best candidate to pardon Snowden would probably be a philosopher who was primarily concerned about right and wrong, and you better not hold your breath waiting for one to become president. I actually think that Obama has a philosophical streak, but not in his top 10 identities. His identity as a lawyer is certainly higher, and professional lawyers are trained to ignore such trivialities as right and wrong.
On the third hand, I also blame the big dick Cheney, both for creating the personal-privacy-abusing national security apparatus that Obama has to deal with (in his persona as a realist) and for stuffing the entire civil service with ideologues. That may be the worst legacy of Dubya's miserable failure of an administration. The federal civil service was supposed to be task-oriented and apolitical, an organization of professionals who would competently and impartially administer whatever legislation the political process threw at them, and even ignoring political pressures from the executive branch. Not so under Cheney and his cronies, who actively worked to drive out competent careerists and carefully screened the personal politics of all new hires. Of course the punchline is that the so-called Republican Party now blames Obama for being unable to fix the system they worked so hard to break and keep broken.
Pardoning Snowden? You'd be better off hoping they decided corporations are inhuman monstrosities hiding under the legal fiction of decency.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
He hasn't stood trial nor been convicted of anything.
I don't know about most of you, but I still find the whole thing around Snowden weird. I mean /., the internet, and the whole US made such a big deal about it, but I pretty much assumed that what he "revealed" was going on already. I mean everyone acts like it was a big shock, but seriously, why was anyone surprised by it?
First of all, Obama SHOULDN'T pardon him.
Although many of the things Snowden released could be considered whistle-blowing for the benefit of the American people, he also released information about how America spies on competitors and enemies overseas. That's not whistle-blowing. It's interfering with intelligence-gathering. Snowden should return to America, plead guilty, and the judge should take into consideration the balance between the good done and the damage done.
Second of all, Obama WON'T pardon him.
The Obama administration has been harder than any literally other administration on whistle-blowers. What makes you think he would go easy on the most significant whistle-blower of our generation?
There is an endless discussion about everything but the real issue:
Our freedom is being completely destroyed along with the hope that we will ever get it back.
Our future is being threatened. Our lives are at risk.
No way.
I am confused. I thought that, to be pardoned, you have to have been found guilty of, or pleaded guilty to, something in a court of law.
He has been charged, but there has been no trial, in absentia or otherwise. So how can he even legally be pardoned?
Obama should ask for pardon from the people of Europe. I reckon his pushing for remain caused a fair number people to vote the the other way. Because if there's one thing Brits absolutely love, it's being pushed around by foreigners, which, duh, was the whole fucking point of the question.
Really, if I was some head of state, I'd be like "That's a matter for the people of X". At the very strongest, if pushed, I'd say "Well, personally, I'd prefer..." or "If I was one of them, I'd probably choose...". I wouldn't make threats.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Nope... Nixon got one.
Nope, you can be pardoned for any crime. A conviction firmly establishes that a crime occurred, but the president can pardon you for any federal offense. See Carter's pre-emptive pardon of all the draft dodgers and Ford's pardon of Nixon, before charges were even filed.
Now, technically, accepting a pardon means that you were guilty of said crime. Hence, why Ford may have thought the pardon of Nixon was an elegant compromise. He admits wrongdoing and had already resigned, and we stop trying to throw him in jail.
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He's saving his pardon for Hillary.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No one seems to have detected any apology from Trump.
I'm sure he's sorry they confessed. What other apology does he need to make? They confessed, and Trump had nothing to do with that or with convicting them or setting the sentence. Should he feel sorry that he thought the murder/rape of a jogger in a public park merited the death penalty?
If you scratch an ardent Trump supporter, you find a hater.
You don't even need to scratch the surface of the Trump haters to find a hater.
Nope. A US President can pardon anyone, of any Federal crime. They don't even have to be _suspected_ let alone convicted to get a pardon. It's a true Get Out Of Jail Free card. Nixon for example could have pardoned _himself_. Totally legal, no question. He chose not to because Congress had made it clear that if he did so they'd Impeach him immediately. Pardons don't work on impeachment proceedings, and Nixon didn't want to be impeached, hence he resigned after obtaining agreement that he'd be immediately pardoned.
In _civilised_ countries there's a whole separate process to ensure pardons are issued only where they make some sort of good sense. But in the US it's just the President gets to give a free ride to anybody he likes, including himself. That's because the US a spectacularly corrupt country. Do Americans not realise that?
Alrighty. Let the pardoning commence.
The man got a generation to see their security in a way that more reflects reality.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Should and will are two different things in this case...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The president could pardon someone for "any federal felonies committed" but not misdemeanors. Then Snowden could be convicted of one or more misdemeanor charges like "improper handling of public records" or whatever misdemeanor charge is appropriate.
However, as TFS said:
The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all presidents before him COMBINED.
Obama pardoning Snowden is about as likely as Bill Clinton being a virgin.
What about Hillary Clinton? The Clintons have been in office or running for office most of their adult lives, since 1977. Most of her career, Bill was the public face of the the team, the actual office holder, while Hillary's role was PR, whitewashing negative information, from small issues of character to major scandals. For example, she assembled and led the teams trying to discredit women like Monica Lewinski and Paula Jones, trying to persuade the public that those events never happened and the women were liars. Her career has been all about HIDING the affairs of government officials. A whistle blower like Snowden, someone who puts the truth on public display, is her enemy, a total low-life from her perspective.
That's an interesting thought, I had to look it up.
Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, for all offences "committed or may have committed".
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
Apparently the presidential pardon is for crimes, not offences.
Which, I suppose, is the right way to do it.
Pardoning implies that Snowden violated the law, which he clearly did. It's a way of acknowledging that the crime committed was the right thing to do.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Obama should ask for pardon from the people of Europe. I reckon his pushing for remain caused a fair number people to vote the the other way.
This makes the tacit assumption that leaving the EU was a bad decision.
The [brexit vote] demographics show that a large percentage of people with a degree voted to leave (43% leave versus 57% remain), so you can't say with certainty that staying was the smart thing to do.
The critics are particularly vocal, but not everyone thinks it was a bad move.
Very often pardons come before someone is charged with a crime. At the Constitutional convention and in the Federalist papers, two reasons for early pardon were mentioned. It can be used as immunity for a witness. For example pardoning Hillary's email admin would allow him to testify regarding what Hillary asked him to do. That end can be achieved by the prosecutor's office promising not to prosecute as well. Second, for national reconciliation. Lincoln pardoned the confederates at the end of the Civil War, Johnson pardoned the draft dodgers of Vietnam so the country could move forward.
The likelihood that Obama will pardon anyone who exposes the government's secrets? As the fine summary points out:
The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all presidents before him COMBINED.
Obama REALLY doesn't like people talking about how the sausage is made.
Not necessarily. Pardons have been used in cases where the pardoner believed the person was falsely accused.
Obama is a globalist. Being a globalist is about control. Specifically information control.
Snowden messed with the new world order. He will not be pardoned by Obama.
TL:DR, Ed will not be pardoned, as an object example to a potentially very leaky age.
Per TFA: For the first 80 years of its life, it was used almost entirely to prosecute spies. The president has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all president before him combined. His Justice Department has vastly expanded the scope of the law.
There's a good reason for this. The digitization of most current technical, planning, organizational, and intelligence information means that it can be distributed in mass in ways detrimental to the interests of the United States by any metric. Manning and Snowden have demonstrated the risk from users inside the system. One can lock down systems, but all for not unless the vast majority of users elect not to try. Like so many aspects of criminal law, so many perps slip through without justice being meted out, that those who do get caught, tried, and convicted oftentimes get the book thrown at them as an example to others. "See Dick do something bad? Don't be a Dick." This isn't going to change in the foreseeable future.
So, while Chelsea and Ed may have provided a degree of public service by bringing to light certain practices "we" as a body would prefer the government not engage in, they also dumped boatloads of information that do nothing - much less than nothing - to protect the liberties of Americans. So, Ed will remain a wanted suspect, and if caught and convicted like Chelsea, will do hard time.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I think everyone will agree that Trump loves money. A lot. Even Trump's most ardent supporters.
Did you know that Trump spent about $80,000 to run an ad in favor of the death penalty for the kids who confessed to the rape and murder of the Central Park jogger in 1989?
Funny thing about that story. They were innocent and their confessions were coerced lies. The REAL rapist was identified more than 10 years later and the kids (grown into prison-hardened adults) were released. No one seems to have detected any apology from Trump.
I had originally thought that Hillary had only the one issue (E-mail scandal), but it turns out she's got a whole rack of skeletons in her closet.
If particular note, she made (what she called) a "shameless pitch" to Russia on behalf of Boeing. Russia made a multi-billion dollar deal with Boeing, and Boing then put $900,000 into the Clinton foundation.
Or giving the OK for a uranium deal to a close friend, after which the same close friend put $2.35 million into the Clinton foundation.
Trump has a history of getting money through business, but Hillary has a history of getting money through corruption.
She's not called dirty Hillary for nothing!
Sure Obama is bad but he doesn't deserve that.
I mean he already got the Nobel Peace Prize for doing fuck all.
Who do you hate most?
Same question can be made of a Hillary supporter.
And a Sanders supporter.
No one seems to have detected any apology from Trump.
It's worse than that... he actually doubled down on it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
how do we know Snowden was looking out for US citizens? What if Snowden was working for the Russians as a sleeper or some other foreign gov't?
What if he's a triple agent, giving false info to the Russians right now? How deep you wanna go?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Pardon William Leonard Pickard
People say he did it out of conviction or stayed true to his principles. Well, so does a suicide bomber.
But here's the difference: The suicide bomber is expecting a reward - 72 virgins or some other heavenly reward. Snowden knew he would throw away his life but he didn't do it for a personal reward. He did it for others, for his country.
I haven't made up my mind whether Snowden was misguided, stupid or justified. But I have concluded that the man is principled and a selfless patriot. He might be stupid and misguided, but he felt he did the right thing, at great personal cost to himself, for no personal reward.
Actually, I am most mystified by why he did such a thing. It doesn't seem to be any of his business, and it was long before he could make political hay from it. He loves money, but he loves authority and extreme punishment at least $80,000 more than he loves money?
In the context of this discussion, it seems extremely unlikely that such a person would be issuing many pardons except to his co-conspirators, and in that context it would make excellent sense to discourage them from testifying against him.
Hmm... Now I wonder if Edgar Snowden in his former employment could have dug up any additional dirt on Trump University and various other so-called business activities?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Thanks. I wasn't paying attention to which president since it didn't matter to my point.
Trump had nothing to do with that or with convicting them or setting the sentence.
... He ran his advertisement on May 1st, 1989. The trials and convictions happened in August and December 1990.
No, you are lying, but what else do you expect from a Trump supporter?
Perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion if you can start with a single truth: Who do you hate most?
If you want to start a meaningful conversation, how about you stop name-calling and tell us something about Hillary that is
a) Backed up by a reference, and
b) Encourages the reader to vote *for* her?
It's easy to call someone names. It's much *much* harder to have an actual... you know... meaningful discussion.
Until then, I'll just assume you're just another shallow-thinking name-caller.
but no he won't
and you can't unpardon them either. You could dismiss the charges with prejudice so they can't be re-instated.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Those that think Obama would be more likely to pardon Snowden clearly haven't been paying attention.
Earth is a single point of failure.
I'm no expert, but I was under the impression that you have to be convicted before you can be pardoned.
Mr. O could maybe influence the prosecutors drop charges, but I have no clue how that works.
No, the presidential pardon power is very broad and allows the president to pardon for "for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment." There is no requirement to be convicted of any crime; and a pardon, unlike deciding not to prosecute, prevents prosecutor in the future.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If that's your idea of a meaningful discussion, then...
I win.
"When I was a young man, they told me if I voted for Goldwater, I'd get sent to Vietnam. I voted for Goldwater and sure enough, I got sent to Vietnam."
" Then, as if that wasn't enough, he leaks EVERYTHING, to foreign media. At least Ellsberg leaked to a reputable American media"
First, wikileaks isn't a media company. Second, two of those "reputable" (LOL) news sources that you speak of, including the Washington Post, ignored Manning when he contacted them--which is why he went to Wikileaks. Funny how one little detail like this fells a house of cards, which is in this case your babble about Manning being motivated by "hubris". Hubris! Same old argument, be it Assange Greenwald or Manning. You need a new script.
Your outage would be more impressive if you had realized that I was discussing Snowden, not Manning.
I would not accuse Manning of being motivated by a desire for the limelight; he sought no public recognition and was only outed by someone that he foolishly confided in. If you're going to commit a Federal felony you should probably have the discipline to keep your mouth shut. I think that he was used by all sides -- Assange certainly did him no favors; there's another glory seeking asshole that needs the affirmation of the masses -- and I would not put him in the same category as I place Snowden.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
He was never tried or convicted, but was pardoned by President Ford. You only need to have the _potential_ to be convicted of a crime to be pardoned. As with Nixon, the President could claim that it would be in the best interests of the country. (Don't misread "could", I chose it intentionally.)
I have no idea why people invent fairy tales when historical facts are readily available.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
In a police state Snowden will never be pardoned.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
That's actually a fair point.
In the future, if you were to wrap that in a sentence or two with the link as one of the words, and drop the childish name calling, you'd probably get voted up.
Any examples?
He said a lot of things back then, like how the Tiananmen Square massacre was a good thing because it showed the world how tough China was. He's gotten better at hiding what he is since he started doing TV.
Whoops, sorry for the misunderstanding. I assumed I was seeing talk of Manning because of many details including this:
Snowden's media buddies just dumped everything out there without any consideration whatsoever of the consequences. ..which is totally not true, and is much more often (wrongfully) attributed to Manning for the fact of Wikileaks' releasing a large volume. "Snowden's media buddies"--you mean, "journalists"? Media buddies would be an apt term if they were actually associated with any large media companies at the time. These "media buddies" as you call them, now at theintercept.org ,have slowly and responsibly reviewed and released documents, and in many cases refrained from leaking things they believe would harm national security. This includes fact of Afghanistan's telephone system being surveilled 24/7, which Wikileaks wound up revealing only because the Intercept refused to. Also, most of what was revealed with Snowden's leaks was domestic--so what consequences are you so scared of, huh?
They did not "dump everything out", and there has been consideration of the consequences. The government has offered no evidence whatsoever--after much review--that Snowden's actions did any tangible harm.. just like Manning.
the leaks EVERYTHING, to foreign media
Again, I thought you were talking about Manning leaking to Snowden, because this is totally wrong--many of the Intercept, including Laura Poitress and Glenn Greenwald, are Americans. Intercept also didn't exist when Snowden first leaked these things, but came about because of it. At least Wikileaks is "foreign".
That's great that you share emotional sentiment about the character of Snowden with Robert Gates--is that supposed to compel me? And I guess that's all you share, unless you give me some examples as to what he leaked that pisses you off so much. Is it how the feds have modified exported router hardware? Or their various invasions of Google's subnets? Does learning that our government sees us at enemies make you mad at Snowden ? Really?
What I mentioned about hubris (as you put it) still applies--when it comes to Assange or Snowden, the "egomaniac" / "narcissist" narrative is just too obvious.
> sold
Yeah, I'm going to need some sources for that one.
How do you think he bought his safe travel and then sanctuary?
The president has prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all president before him combined. His Justice Department has vastly expanded the scope of the law, turning it from a weapon against the nation's enemies to one that's pointed against its own citizens.
I think this needs to be taken with a grain or two of salt. Firstly, does the president have the power to prosecute anyone? I thought that would be for the public prosecutor or something; the president would not have the legal power to prosecute any criminal. Of course, this may be different under America law.
Secondly, I think it is a fundamentally dishonest way to use statistics, comparing the current president to "all presidents before him"; he is addressing a situation that didn't exist before, really: the rise of the internet and the fact that this enables not just good and honest people, but also criminals, terrorists, spies etc. Obama has been president for 8 years - in that time, these problems have grown exponentially. You might as well say "more people have died in road accidents since 1900 than in the tens of thousands of years that humanity has existed before 1900". Which is true - but it still paints a grossly distorted picture.
He didn't need to buy that; Russia would have done it for anybody that put their finger in the US government's eye so thoroughly. Especially after said government tried to launch a smear campaign against the guy in an apparently-not-totally hopeless attempt to dupe some people into believing (among other baseless claims) that Snowden was in it for personal gain... At that point, it's a chance for Russia to laugh in the face of the US and call its government's lies out for what they are, by protecting the person the lies were about.
Or you could be charitable to the Russians, and suggest that they were just doing the right thing, harboring somebody who did the right thing, and the courageous thing, and was hunted by his own government for it. Russia certainly has the history to understand the injustice of political prisoners, ironic though it is for the US to be the nation producing them.
Or hell, maybe Snowden just gave them a pile of (legitimately-obtained) cash and/or the information on some wanted criminals (wanted for real, harmful crimes, not for political dissent) that the NSA had located within Russia but not shared with the Russian government. Simple motivated self-interest, neither focused on Snowden's actions nor on the US government's actions. I doubt this theory, but it's plausible.
In any case, do you have any actual *evidence* that Snowden sold his data to any foreign powers? Because there's lots of reasons he could have found asylum in Russia.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Before that can happen, Obama would have to grow a pair.
Neither party has offered a compelling candidate for a long time now, and that's just how the 1% like it...
Three of the most egregious political scandals in modern history happened under republican presidents. Nixon saw more scandals than you've seen pornhub videos. Reagan had some truly terrible ones - Iran Contra was nothing short of committing high treason against the united states and he only escaped the death penalty by virtue of a willing fallguy (Oliver North). Shrub got your Afghanistan and Iraq which is an ongoing travesty that has cost well over 6 trillion dollars so far (almost half the entire US debt was spent on those wars in other words).
That's just a fact. Nobody is saying democrats are perfect or never have scandals but comparitively speaking, they've simply not been as egregious or on the same scale. Clinton got his dick sucked sure, but nobody died. Obama's IRS targetted right-wing groups - an action that makes perfect sense actually, if you're going to profile organisations like to cheat on their taxes then organisations opposed to paying taxes would be at the top of the list by virtue of their own public statements - and inconvenienced a lot of people (about 20% as much as racial profiling tends to inconvenience blacks and muslims - yet that is roundly supported by the same people who opposed this - in fact many of the victims of the IRS scandal are STILL vocally supportive of racial profiling) - it was bad, but, and this is important - nobody died.
The worst scandal you can actually point at a democrat in the last hundred years actually is probably Obama's drone program, which is in fact killing lots of innocent people. But the conservatives never take him to task over that since they started the program and sure as hell want to continue it next time they have the whitehouse. The criticism for that has largely come from the left actually. That has killed some people - lets be extremely generous and say 2000 or so. That's less than one tenth of what Nixon's Vietnam scandal killed, less than one fifteenth of what Reagan killed with the Iran Contra scandal (a number that is STILL busy going up) and about 1% of what Shrub killed with his bogus wars.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Because Obama was the one who instructed Snowden to do what he did thus fundamentally transforming this country.
Maybe if he pardons anyone, it should be the NSA. He should give Snowden a medal for his service to the people of this country and exposing the betrayal we have faced by the intelligence services that would build Stasi 2.0 right on our own soil.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The president could pardon someone for "any federal felonies committed" but not misdemeanors. Then Snowden could be convicted of one or more misdemeanor charges like "improper handling of public records" or whatever misdemeanor charge is appropriate.
I get the impression he'd be OK with that. The reason he gave for fleeing was not that he was afraid of doing jail time. There's a long history in this country of accepting punishment in jail as a matter of conscience. No, he was afraid of being put to death for treason, or worse put into the Bush-era torture system. If he thought he could be guaranteed neither of those would happen, I suspect he'd love to come back to the USA and face trial. Particularly a nice big public one.
Wow. What else can we shake out of a hierarchy of infinitesimals? Oh, yeah, the Drake equation.
With the proviso he could never work a government job again.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Public opinion certainly didn't help, despite how fair and impartial the court ties to be.
The statement I'm referencing was in 2014!
and about 1% of what Shrub killed with his bogus wars.
BTW, do you think that if we had a Democrat in the White House we wouldn't have gone to war in Afghanistan?
Hint: The US absolutely would have. As much as Bernie likes to rant about how smart he is on these things, he would have sent the troops in or been forced out of office.
At least we could have gotten things cleaned up much faster without that 10-year expensive disaster of a distraction in Iraq.
Does apologizing like a little bitch gain you anything?
Nope.
"Oh i didn't like him till he groveled about how sorry he was." Said noone ever...
Is this really indicative of the mindset of Trump supporters?
How utterly depressing.
I mean, the Supreme Court disagrees with you. Burdick v. US says that a pardon is issued with a presumption of guilt, and acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt.
You are right that a pardon wipes away a lot of the ex-felon consequences beyond simply getting you out of jail.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Trump is such an easy candidate to take down, how shameful it is that the Democrats somehow found a candidate who suffers a real chance of losing to him. It SHOULD have been a slam dunk.
Read the Pentagon Papers. The Vietnam War was started through concerted action by multiple US presidents, namely Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. All of them were involved in creating the war in their own ways during their presidencies.
Nixon wasn't doing it for political gain in the US. He was continuing a policy of intentional war-creation designed by previous presidents and our department of defense. The reason was simple: really loud sabre rattling right next door to China, designed to keep China in check militarily.
Looking at the previous presidents thought the lens of truth, with their stated policy of starting a war in Vietnam, is eye opening. Makes you realize that some of the things our current government is doing (fabricating a narrative out of whole cloth about Benghazi, starting shit in Lybia, leaving ISIS completely alone during their formative phases so they become a serious problem) are from the same playbook of lying to the American people in order to justify starting a war.
Makes you wonder what the end game is for the Middle East according to the Pentagon. We have had quite a few sequential presidents who have been instigating overtly and covertly for serious military action over there. Is it Iran, or maybe the Soviets they are sabre rattling at? Maybe both and China to boot?
Your guess is as good as mine. Just realize that the Pentagon Papers, the Media, PA FBI office burglary, and Watergate weren't just incidents that revealed the corruption, duplicity, and illegal propensities in the highest levels of our government. They were an object lesson for politicians and spooks alike. They won't make the same mistakes with accidental disclosure in the future. And, they get to use these experiences as a guide to craft policies that make it easier for them to not only keep their nefarious deeds under cover but also to decriminalize and channel these actions and policies.
They got caught with their pants down, it won't happen again. Except is did with Snowden, and Assange, and a few others. The lack of concern by the American people is excruciating to see. It's the same government playbook, running the same plays, just with more sophisticated blinds, double track backs, and fake outs designed to engineer plausible deniability. Turns out, most of America doesn't care if their every move is watches. Turns out they don't care if our country starts a war in the Middle East, not really, not where and when it counts. They sure won't turn on the politicians they support if they find out those politicians are dead set on starting wars, intruding on our privacy, and milking us dry through taxation designed to fill government and corporate coffers alike.
Enough of that. Try to sleep well at night, knowing that your elected officials are more than willing to kill an arbitrarily large number of Americans, and an even larger number of non-Americans in order to accomplish secret goals they won't admit to. And they are willing to nudge and push and shove the American people towards these premeditated mass murders over a period of decades, across administrations, and through generations if necessary. And they are willing to kill to make sure it doesn't get out.
And as a tax payer, you're footing the bill for every bit of it.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
You are incredibly uninformed. So much so that responding seems like so much pissing in the wind. But here goes, my bladder is full and I have a moment to waste. The following examples are not by any stretch of the imagination a complete list, nor are they they worst examples. Merely some that are at the top of my head at the moment. Nor are they intended to single out Democrats. All of our elected officials are guilty of atrocious actions against not only Americans but also people of other countries. These examples are provided so you can see how similar Democrats and Republicans are, because they are, and no amount of pretending or comparison can change that, in spite of what you would like to convince other of.
Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, all democrats, all worked in secret to create the Vietnam war. There was a concerted action over decades to produce this war and the Democrats played their part. They conspired in secret, and acted with secret intentions, to throw American troops into a war for reasons they were not willing to disclose to the public. See the Pentagon Papers for info. The result is they got their desire and every dead American soldier in that war is attributable to them, as well as others.
You could also toss in FDR's actions at Yalta as one of the greatest travesties and traitorous acts in history, creating incredibly protracted problems with the Soviet Union, their bloc countries, etc. Words do not suffice to describe the destruction, death, and turmoil he created through unnecessary appeasement of the Soviets.
I think you have a problem seeing, one, the facts as they are, and two, realizing that just because someone is not prosecuted doesn't mean that nothing bad happened.
I mean really, Obama's IRS actions are equivalent to some of the actions that got Nixon in trouble, only worse in that the administration circled the wagons and no one is held accountable for targeting the American people's freedom. Come on dude. You're letting your Democrat cheerleader brain override your ability to think critically about how abuse of power that goes unchecked can be used by the next administration, and that every time it is misused and goes unchecked, the American people care just a little bit less about their freedoms and the government feels a lot more emboldened to fuck with us.
I really cant tell if you are a paid shill or just so misguided that you are indistinguishable from one. Minimizing actions like the IRS's actions under Obama is just fucking shameful.
Maybe I can help. Chant this mantra morning noon and night: "There are only two political parties in the US. The elected and the electorate."
Once you get that straight you will be better able to see the threats to the people of America. Stop siding with the aristocracy. You seem pretty intelligent, the American people need you on their side.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I remind you of the election of 2000. The broken dynamics of American elections tend to make every election (but especially each presidential election) into a horse race, no matter how vast the differences between the candidates.
By the way, I am not a Hillary lover. Nor a hater. I actually think she's better than the average politician in most ways, but she has been targeted for vilification to an amazing degree. To me the funniest part is that most of it was collateral vilification that would have been directed at her husband if he were not effectively retired from politics. Perhaps her worst problem is that she's more of a lawyer than a politician, and even the politicians don't like lawyers, notwithstanding the awkward reality that most of them are one.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
FACT: The State Department IG report said that "there are criminal penalties for the unlawful removal or destruction of Federal records" (page 57), repeating that "penalties exist for the unlawful removal or destruction of records" (page 48)
FACT: The report states, "At a minimum, Secretary Clinton should have surrendered all emails dealing with Department business before leaving government service and, because she did not do so, she did not comply with the Department’s policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act." (Page 23)
FACT: It is clear that she broke this law (the Federal Records Act).
There are lots of times when someone breaks the law but isn't charged or convicted. That doesn't mean they didn't break the law.
IG Report is here https://oig.state.gov/system/f...
Even if Hussein was still relevant, it was a nitwit move to think we could just push the pause button on Afghanistan and that we'd just sweep through Iraq in a few weeks and... and what? Oh yeah, we'd be 'greeted as liberators.' Ugh.
Its an interesting question. A smart democrat would not have wanted the Afghanistan war (and neither would a smart republican in the bizarro world where one could actually get elected) but may well have ended up with their hand forced as you suggest.
Even then if all the resources wasted on Iraq could instead have been spent on Afghanistan it would have gone a great deal better and probably be over long ago at a fraction of the cost. It also would have kept Saddam's baatist military command in place and thus they would not have done what they did: form ISIS.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I'd say a lot of his fans are probably inside the country, given that disinformation against him usually doesn't portray him in a negative light (like disinformation against snowden or greenwald). This reflects the fact that the media and government have failed to smear him.
Aside from that, my question is: what did he reveal about the US government spying on its own people that is so damaging? And does learning that your government spies on you and lies about it make you madder at the messenger than any other party?
These questions are pretty much rhetorical, since i know damn well why you are here (as well as many others who frequent these topics on slashdo)t, but i'm still curious how you would answer them.
Also,
Should he feel sorry that he thought the murder/rape of a jogger in a public park merited the death penalty?
YES! This is a perfect example of why the death penalty is a bad idea. The justice system is imperfect and death is not revoke-able.
He advocated that 5 kids be put to death. He did that even before they were found guilty. It turns out that they were innocent and Trump was simply wrong. If he had his way, 5 innocents would have been killed.
Damn straight that's the sort of thing you apologize for.
1) Theft 2) False credentials 3) Tampering with national security 4) Placing all Americans at risk 5) International flight 6) Traveling on a voided passport 7) Bartering with items/information he doesn't legally own nor has personally created 8) Terroristic threats 9) Unethical treatment toward his employer 10) Misrepresentation 11) Perjury/breach of oath 12) Dereliction of duty 13) Failure to follow orders. 14) Impersonation of known government officials/identity theft. He's also flirting with, in fact, trying to set up the two main offenses: A) Assisting foreign powers B) Aiding the enemy. Sure, the Constitution guarantees the freedom to share more information in the public, and the right to free speech is great... but NOT when it will cause a danger to National Security. The info Snowjob likely possesses is probably EXACTLY the kind of stuff al Qaeda wants leaked out so they can learn better of how to successfully find ways to kill Americans at will. Not to mention, maybe names and locations of counter-terrorism spies that the U.S. has out in the field infiltrating the ranks of those would-be murderers. People want to complain about the NSA and allegedly "spying" on them, but then they'll also complain about not feeling the government is doing enough to protect them from al Qaeda! The NSA is not "hiding" anything, but they'll be truly ineffective if EVERYONE knows what they're working on. They're not interested in photos of your baby or mom's recipes. Has NOBODY stopped for a moment and asked "why" the NSA has been doing what they're doing? Did people think the authorities use magic to uncover terrorist plots? Which would you prefer, "spying" on you or terrorism on you? Snowflake did what he did for the fame (for the escape from obscurity that everyone wants... although most average people simply use Facebook). http://www.newser.com/story/17...