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ACLU Is Launching A Campaign To Convince President Obama To Pardon Edward Snowden (fusion.net)
Coinciding with the launch of Oliver Stone's movie Snowden in select theaters this week, a coalition of civil rights groups are launching a campaign to convince President Obama to pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Fusion reports: The effort, which is organized by the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, will gather signatures from regular people and endorsements from celebrities. Snowden will speak by video link from Moscow at a press conference on Wednesday morning in New York, and an initial list of "prominent legal scholars, policy experts, human rights leaders, technologists and former government officials" in support of the cause will be released, according to a statement from the campaign. A presidential pardon would mean that Snowden could come home from Moscow, where he's lived for the past three years, without the fear of being prosecuted. He currently faces federal charges of violating the Espionage Act and stealing government property, even though his disclosures led to reform of the wiretapping program by Congress. Many Snowden supporters are hoping the movie Snowden, which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday, will spur support for a pardon. "I think the value of the movie is that it's lsikely to reach millions of people who have not been paying close attention to Snowden or to the debate about surveillance and privacy," Snowden's layer at the ACLU, Ben Wizner, told Fusion. "Those people will emerge from the movie more educated about surveillance and with more positive attitudes toward Snowden."
He's about to leave office. The elections are in less than 4 weeks.
They're targeting the wrong president.
They should be targeting Donald Gump or Hilary Pneumonia and trying to convince them to make an election promise.
Except that it's become tradition for presidents to pardon a bunch of people on their last day in office. If your political career is basically over then noone can do much if you pardon all your friends.
Yes.
1) exposed the fact Eric holder lied to congress multiple times concerning domestic intelligence and broad data collection against us citizens accused of no crimes. (Purgery is a crime)
2) irrefutably exposed that the NSA performs illegal wiretapping on a routine, standard operating policy basis. (Illegal search is a high crime, specifically denounced in the constitution.)
3) irrefutably exposed that the NSA shares data on foreign persons collected in bulk in exchange for bulk data on american citizens, again, for people who are not accused of any crime, or part of any investigation. (Some of these countries are not on diplomatically friendly terms, making this very close to genuine treason.)
But of course, the guy who calls attention to the elephant in the room is the bad guy.
There was a clear demarcation between the domestic related material and the foreign intelligence related material.
No, there was not.
That was the whole point and why people are upset! Supposedly 'foreign' intelligence-gathering scooping up masses of domestic data on US citizens and being retained in essence forever.
Way to (intentionally) miss the pachyderm sitting in your lap!
Of course it's quite likely you're paid (like many others posting on related topics in which governments have an interest) to post such utter nonsense so it's not really surprising.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Are you suggesting that Richard Nixon was tried and convicted? Or that Gerald Ford did *not* pardon him?
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I count 57. Bigger number for Bush, and other presidents.
Number of ever people pardoned that embarrassed a government: 0.
(Possible exception during the revolution, when the rebels became the government.)
Obama is deeply conservative. Hell will freeze over before he would pardon Snowden.
And let us not forget CIA director George Tenet was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom for lying about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq. Resulted in many thousands of dead. Never challenged by Obama. Because Tenet worked for the system. Snowden worked against the system.
Besides as a man of principles, I am sure he is anxious for his day in court where he can stare down the corrupt powers-that-be under the unblinking gaze of public scrutiny, [...]
It's flowery language you're using here, but according to Snowden and his lawyer, this is more or less correct. The Espionage Act does not allow Snowden to make a "I did it in the public interest"-type defence.
Whether or not he would actually return, were he charged with something that did give him the possibility of saying in open court why he was motivated to do what he did, is an open question. Still, right now he doesn't have the option of having his day in court. A show trial is never your day in court.
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FYI, the British did march on Washington DC AFTER the US was a sovereign nation,
Well, you had just invaded Canada, while Britain was busy with Napoleon.
and they would have probably stretched the necks on more than one traitor if they had a chance
Not after the Paris Treaty of 1783. One of those traitors even became ambassador to Great Britain.
Then you are blind. Every call for more and stricter gun control laws is an attack on gun rights. Every call to confiscate or restrict the classes of weapons we can own is an attack on rights. "Nobody needs an Assault Weapon" is an attack on gun rights, "Common Sense Gun laws" that will do nothing to stop criminals from using guns are an attack on gun rights.
If you saw nothing then you didn't actually look.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
You initially wrote this.
Deaths due to second hand smoke this week: 9,100 or 1,300 deaths every day
You are attributing 1,300 deaths a day due to second hand smoke which is wrong. CDC only claims 42,000 deaths annually are caused by secondhand smoke which works out to 115 deaths a day due to second hand smoke. You either misunderstood what the CDC provided or are intentionally misrepresenting the CDC's data.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
If that were true, then several current and former Presidents, some of their cabinet members, a bunch of senior military officers, many, many CIA, NSA, FBI and DEA officers, and probably quite a few members of Congress would be in jail right now.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz