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President Obama Says He Can't Pardon Snowden (arstechnica.com)
Joe Mullin, writing for Ars Technica:A campaign to pardon NSA leaker Edward Snowden, launched in combination with a fawning Oliver Stone film about him, hasn't made any headway. The request spurred the entire membership of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, 13 Republicans and nine Democrats, to send a letter to President Barack Obama urging against a pardon. "He is a criminal," they stated flatly. Obama weighed in on the matter on Friday. During his European tour, he was interviewed by Der Spiegel -- the largest newspaper in Germany, a country where Snowden is particularly popular. After discussing a wide range of issues, he was asked: Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden? Obama replied: "I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point." He continued: I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system. At the point at which Mr. Snowden wants to present himself before the legal authorities and make his arguments or have his lawyers make his arguments, then I think those issues come into play. Until that time, what I've tried to suggest -- both to the American people, but also to the world -- is that we do have to balance this issue of privacy and security.
President Ford pardoned Nixon for the watergate scandal, and Nixon never stepped inside a court for his misdeeds.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I am thinking in this case Obama is getting a twofer : that is to say, he not only gets to not pardon Snowden (who has embarrassed Obama) but also gets to signal to Hillary that she is not getting.a pardon either without explicitly saying so, without making it look like there is strife within the Democratic Party.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
presidents have pardoned tons of people in the past. all you need is an indictment and you get pardoned for that. snowden has already been indicted.
I seem to recall President Nixon being pardoned by President Ford for any and all illegal and unconstitutional actions taken during the period of his Presidency.
Obama could do the same, but pardon it only for those actions up to and including his date of departure from the USA.
The President can pardon whomever he wishes. Most recently, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before charges were even brought. There's plenty of writing on the subject and it's a rather cut-and-dry issue.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community.
Because that worked out so well for William Binney and Thomas Drake: in an unannounced, armed, early morning raid, a dozen agents armed with rifles appeared at his house, one of whom entered the bathroom and pointed his gun at Binney, who was taking a shower. The FBI confiscated a desktop computer, disks, and personal and business records.[14] The NSA revoked his security clearance, forcing him to close a business he ran with former colleagues at a loss of a reported $300,000 in annual income. The FBI raided the homes of Wiebe and Loomis, as well as House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark, the same morning. Several months later the Bureau raided the home of then still active NSA executive Thomas Andrews Drake who had also contacted DoD IG, but anonymously with confidentiality assured.
Point is: when even at the very top levels of government the Constitution is completely ignored, there can be no rule of law, so laws in this situation are not relevant. If you want your underlings to follow "procedures and practices", best you lead by example, and not ignore both the spirit and the letter of the foundational document of the nation.
Also, as TFA notes, it is absolutely untrue that he cannot pardon Mr Snowden if he so wishes.
http://law.jrank.org/pages/227...
the president has full power to pardon anyone of all crimes, either before, during or after persecution and that the pardon clears the individuals of any consequences that may have arisen from the action from which they were to be punished.
1. Snowden did attempt to go through proper channels. The big ignore..
2. He had no whistleblower protections in place.
3. If he had surrendered, he would have been subjected to torture and punishment without trial. FISA court..
4. This is like the only thing that congress has agreed with Obama on in both terms.. That in itself should be a red flag..
5. With guarantees for fairness, he would have faced a court. Couldn't get those guarantees.
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus (IIRC the context was a little old lady asking if he could help her cross the street): "Can, but won't."
Of course, being a politician he can't get two sentences out of his mouth without least one lie.
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Lest you downmod for political reasons. Obama could pardon anyone for anything - the power is unfettered.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Putin, as part of his promise to Donald Trump that he will not interfere in the internal affairs of the United States, will deport Snowden to the US within a year of Trump taking office.
Finding God in a Dog
Duh! Non-criminals need no pardon you morons.
but Rod Blagojevich can get one and HE may have something on obama
He'll see prosecuting an old lady for a crime a lot of people (willfully or otherwise) do not understand to be not helpful and just let her off. I know people have a lot of angst about the Clintons and their grifter ways, but they're washed up in politics and it's really not worth it.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Wow. Fuck this. Seriously. Obama. What happened man? Obama expects me to believe that he, a former civil rights lawyer, a Senior Lecturer on the Constitution at University of Chicago, and the President doesn't know the law? Clearly he must. So he's straight up lying to cover the fact that he simply don't want to pardon Snowden.
A pardon would mean no more continued investigations into national security breaches. Even if she is innocent, they could still investigate and try her going forward.
So many liberals on here that can't even think straight when you bring up the name Hillary; I'm pointing out an interesting tactical aspect of the non-pardon and they (not you so much) are all like "HILLARY IS TEH INNOCENT DUR DE DUR DE DAH"!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>>>/b/
Obama replied: "I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, except, of course, when I give Hillary her blanket pardon, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point."
What else is new.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If everybody took the approach that [they make their] own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.
The "if I let everyone do xyz then it wouldn't work, and I'm therefor never allowing ANY xyz" argument is a classic strawman.
If everybody in the world became mayor of a town then we'd starve to death because nobody would be producing food... YET we selectively allow people to become mayor all the time.
Snowden did not make arbitrary decisions about something mundane to make a buck... he made a very careful, thoughtful decision, expressly for the public good and NOT for any kind of personal profit (in fact it has cost him dearly, even if he were to get pardoned today, which apparently he won't). Shame on Obama for sound-biting it as though pardoning Snowden would lead to a public clamor for all people who make any decision about anything.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
As everyone and their brother begs him to pardon Hillary / Bill Clinton before he leaves office.
"I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point."
We shall see if he sticks to his guns or if certain folks get special treatment.
My bet is on the latter.
In other words, here's a non-answer that is really an attempt to get Snowden to come back to the states and stand trial, without any actual promise that a pardon will happen. It's just a trick, even if a poor one.
it would be wise and quite the conclusion of a mixed-result presidancy, and a continuance of patriotic candor, if president Obama would admit his sarcasm of not pardonning Snowden by walking his own gangplank and admitting to the world just before he jumped ship of the United States at-large by Awarding the actions of Snowden a presidential Medal of Freedom on the guidelines of having the courage to do what is right and true and bringing together the international community in holding America to it's own renditiin of high standards. And then Obama jumps the gangplank into the Abyss saying the often misinterpretted words of Powdered Toastman "remember, thanks to me!"
Really Barack? Really? If Snowden followed the rules he could at best be fired, have the material buried, and get heckled by the Government and at worst find himself in prison. Snowden looked at his predecessors and made a logical decision. He did what was necessary and did it with a regard for others. Julian Assange just purposely posts unredacted material with no regard for the safety of individuals, Snowden tried to redact personal information that could seriously hurt innocent people.
"I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system."
Whether you agree with what Snowden did or not, it would set a dangerous precedent to pardon someone even before he was taken to trial for what he did. It would be a blanket statement in support of releasing national security documents to the press -- some of which may be useful in exposing corruption and others not so much.
DarkOx
Maybe I'm just another victim of the American "educational" system, but I don't understand your tag line. What does the 17th amendment or repealing it have to do with the "right to read" link that you provided?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Period.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Goddamn coward. This is a prime example of the anemia of the left right here. Obama used to stand against the abuses of the Patriot Act and mass surveillance and then you sold out completely--and some of that is due to the dirty realities in the world, yes I get that maybe closing Guantanamo wasn't going to be as simple as all that, but here he is in the closing weeks of your presidency and he can't even make a token effort to support the ideals he once claimed to hold. The perjurer Clapper walked free and will even keep his job right through the very end.
And why are you doing it, Mr. President? Because your entire plan is to play meek and non-controversial, try to not rock the boat and give the Republicans more and more rope from which to hang themselves. That's been your strategy the whole time, and it's backfired almost every step of the way. Admittedly, you have slightly better chances hoping a Trump presidency with Republicans controlling senate and house, but... goddamn it man. If you wanted to have a nuanced view on the matter, you could have at least had Clapper arrested. Or fired.
Then how about he commutes the sentence of Chelsea Manning - someone who went before a military court instead of running, who's already served more time than any other whistleblower in our nation's history?
http://www.politico.com/story/...
against Richard Nixon. He was thereby charged with some form of "high crimes and misdemeanors". He resigned before a Senate trial could take place, but criminal charges could have grown out of the impeachment.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Um, the elephant in the room is.....the NSA must have something on Obama and every pol. Even on the FISA judges. They will get what they want.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hate to feel the need to point out the obvious, but... Snowden revealed to us all that we were being blatantly lied to by the highest levels of our government and so-called national security apparatus. If Obama wasn't part of that revelation, Obama could have pardoned Snowden more than three years ago.
Obama could have closed GITMO on day 1 of his presidency, using *precisely* the same 'legal authority' that W used to open it. But Obama doesn't have that kind of existential problem with what GITMO represents to the legacy of the United States of America. Apparently.
And Snowden is clearly a tool. I'm *still* waiting to hear him elaborate on his words that "yes, Hillary's email server is a problem".
America is doing its usual pendulum shift from one pole to another. Trump will be interesting.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
He's either ignorant or a liar. Neither of which should be a surprise to anyone.
When you say "I can't pardon someone..." that doesn't necessarily mean you are prohibited by law. It can also mean you have a moral or practical objection that prevents you from pardoning the person.
Just because Slashdot is heavily Snowden-sympathetic doesn't mean we should be deliberately misunderstanding the position of people opposed to pardoning him. You cannot have national security if individual people outside the chain of command decide to buck the classification system. We need better whistleblowing systems and better oversight, but you can't have every college grad deciding he knows better than everyone else. Because while sometimes he does, other times he gets lots of people killed over something stupid.
... an intelligent and thoughtfully presented argument explaining someone's actions as PotUS (regardless of whether I agree with those actions), as opposed to vitriolic sound-bite obsessed melange that we were subjected to during this election cycle and that I fear will become the new norm.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
IF snowden WAS black OR muslim THIS would be different outcome
No, fuck you; I am an independent and do not care which "side" you are for since they are laughably the same. That is why I am above the whole thing and merely point out tactical points of interest.
I don't personally care how much you decide to stay blind to what really happens, but don't get mad when people that can see clearly post about what is real.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
More excuses.
Chelsea Manning - someone who went before a military court instead of running
Snowden ran because he saw what happened to Manning and other whistleblowers.
Legal experts agree that the President can pardon someone even if there has been no charge; they need only specify in broad terms.
For example:
The reasons that Obama won't pardon Snowden are two: First, he doesn't want to. Second, it would beg the question of pardoning Hillary Clinton.
You just don't get it, do you?
It's not OK to unilaterally decide to release top-secret information to the public. End of story.
Unless you run your own email server. Then it's OK.
This means that Hillary gets a pardon. That is going to strongly (very strongly?) support Trump's re-election campaign. How many years were you wanting Trump in office?
Obama said, "we do have to balance this issue of privacy and security."
Sorry, I just cannot find where the US Constitution says privacy needs to be balanced with security. I see a lot about freedom and privacy. What am I missing?
It's a variation on an IT maxim that security and functionality have be balanced against the needs of the user community and the integrity of the system.
By the President of the United States of America a Proclamation
Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States on January 20, 1969 and was reelected in 1972 for a second term by the electors of forty-nine of the fifty states. His term in office continued until his resignation on August 9, 1974.
Pursuant to resolutions of the House of Representatives, its Committee on the Judiciary conducted an inquiry and investigation on the impeachment of the President extending over more than eight months. The hearings of the Committee and its deliberations, which received wide national publicity over television, radio, and in printed media, resulted in votes adverse to Richard Nixon on recommended Articles of Impeachment.
As a result of certain acts or omissions occurring before his resignation from the Office of President, Richard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States. Whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings of the appropriate grand jury and on the discretion of the authorized prosecutor. Should an indictment ensue, the accused shall then be entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury, as guaranteed to every individual by the Constitution.
It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.
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.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.
GERALD R. FORD
Perhaps this is just diplomacy in action.
It's clear that Obama is not fond of Edward Snowden and would never pardon him. But admitting that to a bunch of German Snowden fans is probably not wise. So he just tells them a little lie that seems legit enough for people not used to the American legal system, adding some hints that the case is not black and white.
If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.
You don't say. I don't suppose this applies to your decisions, would it? Decisions like the unprecedented illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of the entire country? Yes, I know, it started under Bush, but guess who has the power to end it at any time but leaves it.
Apparently that somehow doesn't make it difficult to have an organized government or any kind of national security system. You know. A complete black box that's unaccountable to anyone and has vast amounts of information on anyone that would be in a position of power. Apparently we mean different things when we use the word security.
The POTUS doesn't have enough SCROTUSES on the SCOTUS to support the POTUS interpretation of the COTUS, so he can't go against the SCROTUSES who interpret the COTUS for the POTUS.
Obama does not care about Snowen. By this time, Obama has probably bought the *IA's line that Snowden is the anti-christ, that should be shot on sight. Under normal circumstances, he would just say that he will not pardon Snowden because Snowden is bad.
Also, Obama has competent legal help, as well as being a lawyer himself. He knows he can pardon Snowden if he wants to. But the situation visa-vie Snowden allows Obama to state a principle that disallows a pardon for Hilary, without referring to Hilary or even admitting that he knows it might apply to Hilary.
This is a very elegant way to throw Hilary under the bus, without even mentioning she might exist. He can say to Hilary supporters when the question inevitably comes up "I must apply my principles without fear of favor."
Whatever you think about Obama you have to admit that he is a very smart fellow.
From pole to pole? Last pole was the administration that extended domestic surveillance, persecuted snowden and waged war (or proxy wars) in Lybia, Syria etc. Coming pole is a cabinet full of Republicans. America is a pendulum that swings from right to right.
That sounds like a very calculated message, directed at Hillary. There is no way President Obama would say that without having thought about its implications.
Several posters have been caught up on Obama saying he "can't" pardon Snowden, but they're misinterpreting his meaning. He's meaning "won't", like in 2001:A Space Odyssey when HAL said "I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that" really meant HAL was just refusing to open the pod doors.
You might disagree with this decision (I know I do), but don't pretend Obama's confusing legal authority with a weighty presidential decision.
I am not a sig.
> visa-vie
What, you moron? Is that French for living on your credit card?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We see it all the time in police shows "i won't testify until I get immunity blah blah blah"
He can't pardon Snowden... because he is a company man... a total stooge.. a puppet. Look at him, he gave 800 BILLION dollars to wall st.. the guy is a total sellout and a disgrace.
Not playing spelling/grammar nazi, just a friend pointing out that it's "vis-a-vis".
Snowden is a criminal while Hillary isn't? Hypocrisy much...?
Read what he/she said. PREDICTION. You bot.
Article-reading abstinence isn't the answer! This is a perfect case in point, where practicing abstinence with regard to reading the article, simply adds noise to the discussion, and makes it so that many of the people who did read the article, now think you are totally retarded fuckwit since apparently you can't remember anything for even a few seconds.
To me, this obviously isn't true. I personally think you only said such a mind-boggling stupidly-retarded numbskulled thing, simply because of your agenda of cultivating your ignorance, not because of a memory failure. You didn't forget what the article said; you never read it in the first place! But nooo, not everyone is going to believe that, so now we're going to have to have a digression into why you blather empty-headed idiocy like a brain-damaged imbecil whose mother drank too much when she was pregnant.
And one of the arguments the Indy1-is-a-retarded-fuckwit camp is going to say, is that even if you shot your mouth off due to not reading the article, practicing abstinence when it comes to reading, is itself something that only a retarded fuckwit would do. So they're going to say you're a retarded fuckwit regardless of whether the failure is in your memory, vs your desire to remain stupid. Now your defenders (people such I myself) are put on the spot, having to explain that maybe there is some kind of non-stupid merit to stupidity.
And I don't have any fucking idea how to argue that. Do you? (Think of what your dull-witted shit-for-brains comment has just done to your friends here.)
Don't you see how "why does Indy1 say such insipid, half-baked nonsense?" is just going to turn into the stupidest flamewar ever, on par with the level of stupidity of your own speech?
You can prevent this. It turns out that it is easy to avoid saying amazingly stupid things like mentioning the Ford/Nixon thing that the article addresses: just READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE first.
I wonder if maybe there is a way to put on some kind of mental condom, if you have to. Could you maybe have knowledge of the article on hand when you comment on the article, but then forget it later? If you can do that, it might offer most of the advantages of reading-abstinence, while also preventing shockingly-moronic statements which leave us all guessing as to why you say say such stupid things.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
@Anwyn: good comment, and I hate to be "that guy" but..
"visa-vie"
<montoya> I do not think that is spelled the way you think it is. </montoya>
The phrase you're looking for is "vis à vis" - literally, "face to face", or colloquially, "with regards to".
The More You Know, etc etc.
You guys are saying that everything a president says needs to be in perfect accord with the law?
This is going to be fun.
I think if everybody took the approach of Mr. Snowden, everything would be fine. He was very deliberate and circumspect about what was released and how. Not dangerously irresponsible like Manning and wikileaks. Snowden is the kind of whistle-blower that should be respected. The problem is that the government wants to pretend that the things he revealed were actually legal when they were not, and Obama is unfortunately willing to go along with it. If anyone thinks a Trump administration is going to be better, I believe that they are about to be even more surprised than Obama supporters were.
Anyone who says such things is a traitor to America, plain and simple.
When they say such things, what they are really saying is that they believe the people should be willing to give up (some of, or all of) their Fourth Amendment right to privacy for the sake of increased security against a risk that has always been, and will likely always be, with us from now until the end of time. It's a blatant power grab, pure and simple.
They're trying to "balance" the privacy and security scales by removing weight from the privacy side and adding weight to the security side, so that the scale is thus "balanced". That's what they mean by "balancing": taking away our rights. Our liberties. For the sake of safety.
Well excuse the crap out of me but the Constitution of the United States of America DOES NOT NEED BALANCING! They're just fine where they're at on the scale thankyouverymuch.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin/:
"Fish" (David B. Trout)
I once believed in Obama but now I know his actual behavior
makes him one of the more amoral and socially irresponsible
presidents the US has ever had.
It's sad how far some people will go to achieve ambitions,
including compromising whatever principles they may once
have actually held dear. Obama is a good example of this.
... for that massive institutional overreach, 'cause the people who oversaw it sure ain't gonna.
They should give it to Bob Dylan.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
So, if you can't dispute the facts, you insult the source?
Mr. Trump would be so proud of that approach.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Sure, pardon Snowden, I'm all for it, but also I join Birgitta Jonsdottir when I say, Obama can still do one thing right, he can pardon Chelsea Manning! Please!
Obama can pardon him, so his lie clearly makes this fake news. Why is this story getting more popular compared to being blacklisted across the net?
A campaign to pardon NSA leaker Edward Snowden, launched in combination with a fawning Oliver Stone film about him, hasn't made any headway. The request spurred the entire membership of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, 13 Republicans and nine Democrats, to send a letter to President Barack Obama urging against a pardon. "He is a criminal," they stated flatly.
Are these people really that stupid? EVERYONE a president pardons is a criminal. That is the definition of pardon.
However. As much as I would like to see Mr Snowden absolved of all the BS charges against him, he has never stood trial and been convicted, so he cannot be pardoned in any case because of that same definition. What our so called president needs to do is MAN UP and write one of his executive orders forbidding the "justice" department from prosecution.
In any case I'm sure that Mr Snowden is smart enough to NEVER trust anything coming out of the District of Corruption.
In the same way we can't pardon Obama for violating the fourth amendment of the constitution of the United States and article number 12 of the universal declaration of human rights.
Why hasn't there been a petition to pardon Chelsea (Bradley) Manning? Manning blew the whistle, knowing full well the consequences. Manning didn't run away, faced the court system, and is now serving prison time. Of the two, I think Manning is more deserving of a presidential pardon.
Oh, the same intel community that was ABUSING ITS POWER?
The one that would simply make an "approved format" of leak disappear?
Where Snowden finds himself locked in a federal prison and suddenly comes to the realization that he'd be MUCH happier as a woman and "quietly" transitions?
Yeah. Barry, the only reason you look black is because you're full of shit.
We know the liar is a liar.
Not sure what the big deal is. HRC will undoubtedly get a pardon .
Fortunately, we have the case of a previous wistleblower -- then-Pfc (?) Bradley Manning, now Chelsea -- who exposed much worse crimes than Snowden did, who was tried and convicted, and is presently being abused vigorously in US custody. If President Obama is citing a lack of going to trial as his reason for not issuing a pardon, then we have a much more egregious miscarriage of justice much more deserving of such a pardon, for which that reason is not an issue.
The fact that Chelsea Manning has not been pardoned, and is in fact being openly and publicly subjected to abusive treatment to make an example of her, says all you need to know about this administration's stance on pardoning wistleblowers who do their country a great service.
This just goes to show how is in command in the US - an underground clique of state security officials who find Snowden's doing a personal offence against themselves. Obama is completely within his legal rights to pardon Snowden, but he is well aware of what happened to Kennedy (and the Kennedies, too). To be completely blunt, Kennedy was not only executed, he got involved into a sort of a one-way blood feud, where almost all male members of his family were publicly or covertly executed, too.
Every now and then we see the shadow in the sky and feel the effect of an invisible hand. The most powerful elected representative of the people is but a puppet trembling in fear of the supreme ruler(s?) from the shadows.
A pardon is just the start. National Hero Snowden deserves the Medal of Freedom and a seat in Congress.
Did the Thanksgiving turkey appear before a court of law before Obama pardoned it?
These types of pardons are reserved for the powerful such as Nixon and Clinton. Snowden deeply embarrassed the military industrial complex of the Anglo-American empire. He will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. What he did took a lot of courage and what he showed to the American people is that the military industrial complex has a a lot of dirty little secrets...He showed that we are in a police state thanks to 911. Total surveillance is the name of the game and to think that anyone has any privacy is ludicrous. Privacy and even security are reserved for the powerful and those that are well connected to the New World Order...
He absolutely can! he is an "adept liar" =your new profession mr traitor
Your knowledge of history is apparently remarkably thin.
The current problems between the US and radical Muslims go back to Jimmy Carter. It was Carter who screwed-up relations with Iran and his "experts" who thought it a good idea to let the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini back into Iran to lead an Islamic revolution that turned the once very civilized Persian nation into the modern Shiite hell hole and supporter of global terrorism it is. Jimmy's experts thought the Ayatollah was a "peaceful religious guy in robes, like Ghandi". Yeah, I'm old enough to remember that load of garbage.
The real truth, however, is that US problems with hyper-violent middle eastern Muslims goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson and his encounters with them. Jefferson started out as an intellectual who studied science, engineering, all religions, etc and who thought he could negotiate with the Barbary Pirates (the violent radical Muslims of the 1700s who were murdering, raping, robbing, and enslaving non-Muslims). After meeting one of their leaders and attempting to negotiate the release of Americans, he concluded there was no alternative to war and he sent in the Marines. This is why the Marine Corps song includes the line about "the shores of Tripoli" and US Marines are called "leather necks" (they wore leather neck guards to make it tougher to lose their heads to Muslim swords). Jefferson donated his personal copy of the Quran to the Library of Congress with the recommendation that all Americans should read it to learn just how evil and appalling it is, and how dangerous its adherents could be (Thomas Jefferson, author of the US Declaration of Independence, was WAY ahead of Geert Wilders in this recognition)
This from the guy who went all-in on his support for Hillary!?!?!?!?
Clearly no ethical or legal matter at the Snowden level places somebody beneath his personal threshold for what he can bring himself to do. You MIGHT have had a good argument had Obama declared that he could not bring himself to support Hillary and then had he backed Bernie.
Manning was a member of the military, IN UNIFORM, and UNDER OATH, and BY HIS OWN CHOICE when he committed his treason. He deserved a firing squad.
Snowden was a civilian, under civil law, and had seen that the government (at that time run by a Democrat House and Democrat Senate that rubber-stamped everything their Democrat president did) was prosecuting whistle blowers at a record pace. He clearly knew that Obama would prosecute him and that he could not turn to any Democrat politician to protect him. He probably also did not trust any Republican to protect him (either because he was brought up thinking they were evil, or because he had observed their current feckless unwillingness to stand up to Obama). I disagree very strongly with what he did, but from a certain point of view, Snowden's actions are at least understandable (I'd give him more benefit of the doubt if he had NOT taken his data with him into china and Russia where it has undoubtably been cloned and analyzed).
A reasonable President could reasonably pardon Mr Snowden with appropriate cooperation by, and contrition from, Mr Snowden.
There's a difference between Snowden and Clinton. It's very clear that Snowden violated the law big-time, while there's no good evidence that Clinton did anything that warrants criminal prosecution.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
... that accepting a pardon is a tacit admission of guilt.
I'm not sure that either Snowden or Hillary are willing to admit that they committed a crime.
Obama isn't president. Trump is. How old is this article?
He's a traitor. He is a traitor to the United States of America. He should be tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. So as far as this traitor is concerned he can stay in Russia and rot.
You're the fucking President, ASSHOLE! Sign the fucking pardon already and don't a worthless piece of shit for once in eight years.
Patriotism is a favorite device of people with something to sell; A true patriot honors all nations;
Casteism
visa-vie?