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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.
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.
Being US president during the clusterfuck that is the wars in the Middle East is a damned if you do, damned if you don't proposition.
Pull troops out, people rip on you for ISIS and the deteriorating security situation. Put troops in, and you're the head of american imperialist aggression and responsible for deaths of american soldiers and civilians.
You are screwed either way.
And yes, the root cause of the issues there were the misguided policies and lies of Bush/Cheney.