Calling out other crimes does not justify the first crime.
Feel free to explain why revealing crimes should be a crime. More to the point, how is a whisteblower supposed to to blow the whistle without violating rules on classified evidence? Don't bother point to inspector generals, the press, or Congress. Because it's been very, very well established that they are either co-opted, cowed, or kept out of the loop.
What was Snowden supposed to do? Tell the NSA that the NSA was breaking the law? Tell a Senator that all these illegal programs that said Senator has voted for are illegal?
Are you arguing extraordinary rendition is not like kidnapping because kidnapping involves showing probable cause to a judge, grand jury hearings, etc.?
You do realize that there's no angels who come down to heaven and smite countries that let you fly without the proper paperwork? So if Putin just told his airline that they "accidentally forgot" to scan Snowden's passport Ed would be in Cuba today?
Nice squirrel, but that does.....what to prop back up the Big Lie that Snowden chose to end up in Russia?
In other words Clinton may have signed the paper Putin used to rationalize keeping Snowden as his pet, but Putin's the one who decided he wanted a Snowden pet.
Ah, "pet". You forgot to include "traitor" in the list of required junk authoritarian talking points. Short of Putin putting Snowden on a Russian navy fleet chartered for Havana, it's going to be somewhat difficult for him to get to South America when the U.S. has shown how far it's willing to go to get him. But I'm sure Puting declining to spend tens or hundreds of thousands to fly Snoden pro-bono is still Snowden's fault. Somehow.
So, have you always been a fan of corrupt hypocritical authoritarianism, or just since Obama was elected?
If cops were held accountable to the law, there would be thousands going to jail for murder and tens of thousands for excessive force, evidence tampering, perjury, entrapment, etc. But your friendly local RAMPART division doesn't operate on a global scale.
You're really going to try and equivocate on this? "He is guilty." "It's illegal to take classified documents" "his legal liability" "the evidence is overwhelming". You've made it quite clear that you believe he's guilty, that the jury should not consider his actions justifiable, but you don't want him to serve time? Why yes, I would be interested in your oceanfront property in Nebraska....
I happen to believe in trials.
Just not for the top officials breaking the laws, your attempted backpedal aside. Anyone basing an argument on the law wouldn't fly over the mountain ranges of official lawbreaking to first point fingers at the molehill of whisteblowers. Here, I'll make it easy for you. A non-authoritarian, non-monarchist hack would say:
"I want Snowden to stand trial, but thousands of officials from the NSA/CIA/Pentagon/State Department/White House better be in jail before him, since their crimes came first, are far more numerous, and far more severe."
But that's not the argument any of you are making.
the NSA doing it's job, like spying on foreigners
Because Angela Merkel is really a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda. Before you play the "every body does that" defense, name which countries are even capable of spying on Obama's Blackberry.
It's not just the spy bureaucracy. According to polls most of the American people do not approve of his actions.
Which is why calls were 100 to 1 against telecom immunity in 2008, from across the ideological spectrum. Because if there's one thing a majority of Americans want, it's corrupt unaccountable Big Brother spying on the entire planet. And that's before getting to the naked hackery of NBC's polling. You run a poll asking 'do you support Snowden taking classified documents to Putin's Russia?!?!?' and are surprised at the results? How about 'do you support whisteblowers when they reveal top officials breaking the law hundreds of times a second every day of the week'?
Spying on people like Angie Merkel is the entire reason we instructed our Congress to spend $30-$40 per person on an NSA. Period. End of story. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Is this perfromance art, or did you bring enough hallucenegic drugs for everybody? Cuz you're on some mighty powerful acid if you're seriously suggesting we need to spend hundreds of billions to tap the personal communications of our closest allies.
It doesn't help that he ended up in Russia.
It doesn't work to blame Snowden for ending up in Putin's Russia when it was Clinton's State Department who canceled his passport on his way to South America. And for having the president of Ecuador's plane forced down because he might have been carrying Snowden on board.
A rendition is when you arrest somebody in a second country and immediately turn them over to a third. It generally looks a lot like a kidnapping, but with legal paperwork done in the second country, because all arrests are basically legal kidnappings.
Probable cause, warrants, grand jury hearings, trial, lawyers, right to appeals
vs
No probable cause, illegal/secret evidence, no warrant, flown to a gulag or third world dictatorship, torture, no right to a lawyer much less an appeal, military kangaroo court under unlawful command influence, and then tortured with force-feeding when you start a hunger protest at your continued incarceration five years after your incacerators have cleared you for release.
You authoritarian monarchist hacks out yourselves by spending soooo much time talking about how Snowden deserves to go to jail, but say nothing about the lawbreaking and lawbreakers revealed by Snowden. Not one word on Clapper going to jail for perjury, not one word for imprisoning Alexander for FISA violations, not one word on impeaching the POTUS for overseeing it all.
We can argue about what the law should be, but not what the law is.
5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each violation of FISA laws. But this was never about the law, for you.
So your basic point is that the US is deepest darkest totalitarian fascist Gulag state in the history of people. We don't actually have laws or courts.
The U.S. has gulags: they're called Bagram Prison and Guantanomo. Where Obama is busy force-feeding prisoners (which is torture) that have been cleared for release for five years.
Do you have any smarter fascist troll friends that could do this for you?
Your definition of a fair trial is that everyone gets acquitted and is given a trophy.
You're repeating Big Lies as if makes them true, when it only makes you a bigger and more pathetic liar. That or a useful idiot for other liars - neither option looks good on you.
I'd wave it and make those who repeat stupid bullshit reflexively mule-kick themselves in the balls. Treason is the only crime spelled out in the Constitution, and for good reason - so fuckhead monarchists like the AC here can't sling it against anyone they don't like.
Speaking of fuckheads, what about the lawbreaking revealed by Snowden? You guys out yourselves as pathetic hacks when you aren't demanding the impeachment and incarceration of top level officials, from Clapper to Alexander to the POTUS himself, at the same time that you're demanding Snowden's head.
And I'm sure you could go down to Sturgis and find a couple adults that have gotten into a motorcycle accident at 60 mph with no helmet and walked away because they landed in a lake, or something.
Yup, and it would still be valid data...
Then you're right about one thing: someone here knows nothing about the concept of data or the fallacy of anecdotes.
Batshit irrelevant. Men make up the majority of rape victims, and that's something that Demagogue Culture is going to have to deal with. You also skated around the sexual abuse of juvenile prisoners story where it was women committing most of the abuse.
Yes, it is possible to be an adult, become infected with chicken pox, and not become terribly ill or suffer life-altering damage.
And I'm sure you could go down to Sturgis and find a couple adults that have gotten into a motorcycle accident at 60 mph with no helmet and walked away because they landed in a lake, or something. Would you take those two anecdotes and say that getting in a 60 mph bike accident with no helmet is no big whoop?
Save your breath. He made his point. Validity doesn't matter. We all know what you were saying, but there are certain people who, upon any mention of Jews, Nazi's, the Holocaust, etc, get immediately and righteously indignant. ANY comparison of ANYTHING to the holocaust must be shouted down immediately. The next step would be them claiming that you are anti-Semitic.
I'm still waiting for superpowers to carve out a homeland - from other people's lands of course - for the Romani (Gypsies). Because they've also faced discrimination for millennia, and Nazis slaughtered them with as much enthusiasm as they slaughtered the Jews. But the Romani didn't get a homeland, billions a year in free weapons, and carte blanche to bomb and murder their neighbors.
If Obama is comfortable violating other nation's sovereignty with drone strikes, I'm sure he'd be comfortable with the CIA putting a bag over someone's head and tossing him in the back of a van without the knowledge of said someone's government.
I'm not going to advocate or agree with 'liberating' Sweden
I'm still waiting for Saudi Arabia to be made democratic. What's not to invade?
1) Muslim theocratic dictatorship. Check. 2) Oil. Check and check. 3) Where the 911 hijackers were actually from.
More men are raped in the U.S. than woman, according to figures that include sexual abuse in prisons.
In 2008, it was estimated 216,000 inmates were sexually assaulted while serving time, according to the Department of Justice figures. That is compared to 90,479 rape cases outside of prison.
And that's just from prisons. There's also more men assaulted in the military:
Preventing sexual assault has frequently been framed as a women's rights issue in coverage over the past year, but the numbers show that it is very much a problem that cuts across genders. In an analysis of the final data, the Associated Press found that in terms of sheer numbers, there were many more men who were victims of assault in 2013 than women. "About 6.8 percent of women surveyed said they were assaulted and 1.2 percent of the men," the AP reports. âoeBut there are vastly more men in the military; by the raw numbers, a bit more than 12,000 women said they were assaulted, compared with nearly 14,000 men.â
To which there is a frequent "yeahbut women under-report rape", to which there is an easy "and that's different from men how"? That's 14,000 men in a macho man-up culture that have admitted to rape, so the real number is going to be much higher as well.
Let Gabe rake in the cash on Steam, but spin off a Games division that only has to worry about...making games. Then we'd already have Portal 3 & Half Life 3 instead of holding our breaths Forever.
What the f*$# is wrong with us? How much longer are we going to be in denial that there's a thing called "rape culture" and we ought to do something about it?
More men are raped than women (see: prison and military) overall. No doubt someone steeped in Demagogue Culture will complain that bringing up that fact is unfair because a man being raped dozens or more times in prison over the course of his sentence isn't the same thing as a college coed being attacked in a dark alley. Which means the latter is worse. Or something.
Demagogue Culture trolls will stop being full of crap when they start talking about female teachers raping male high school students in terms of "rape culture" along with the coed in the ally. Or when you can read a story like this and have "rape culture" mentioned every other sentence.
"The older authority figure wins the trust of the young target by cultivating a false friendship, having heart-to-heart conversations, giving gifts, offering protection. And then the sex ensues, sometimes forced, sometimes seemingly consensual.
It is a classic predatory tactic known as "grooming," and no one familiar with it could have been terribly surprised when a new report from the U.S. Department of Justice declared that young people in the country's juvenile detention facilities are being victimized in just this way. The youngsters in custody are often deeply troubled, lacking parents, looking for allies. And the people in charge of the facilities wield great power over the day-to-day lives of their charges.
What was a genuine shock to many was the finding that in the vast majority of instances, it was female staff members who were targeting and exploiting the male teens in their custody."
This is the most childish post I've seen on this story yet.
Childish deflection. Attacking an entire group of people based on the actions of.000001% of that group is always bullshit, no matter who it's coming from or who it's directed at.
Objection your honor, asserts facts not in evidence! No one said there was anything wrong with you or that you should be feared.
Ah, the "if the shoe fits, wear it" defense. The same crap that right wingers like Rush Limbaugh say right after they've been called out for smearing women, minorities, or gays. "Oh, I didn't mean your group of upstanding citizens, I mean those people over there!" Always bullshit, no matter who it's coming from or who it's directed at.
The whole point is women can't know a-priori who the good guys are and the penalty is being raped or killed.
Men are more likely to be raped (see: prison and the military) overall than women, and far more likely to be murdered. But facts need not apply in Demagogue Culture.
Slashdot Mirror
Feel free to explain why revealing crimes should be a crime. More to the point, how is a whisteblower supposed to to blow the whistle without violating rules on classified evidence? Don't bother point to inspector generals, the press, or Congress. Because it's been very, very well established that they are either co-opted, cowed, or kept out of the loop.
What was Snowden supposed to do? Tell the NSA that the NSA was breaking the law? Tell a Senator that all these illegal programs that said Senator has voted for are illegal?
Pete, is that you?
Your comparisons are insane? No, I got that just fine.
"Stuck inside working from home today.
Now I know how Anne Frank felt."
"Someone stole a bag of potting soil from my carport today.
This must be how the Native Americans felt when they lost their lands."
Nice squirrel, but that does.....what to prop back up the Big Lie that Snowden chose to end up in Russia?
Ah, "pet". You forgot to include "traitor" in the list of required junk authoritarian talking points. Short of Putin putting Snowden on a Russian navy fleet chartered for Havana, it's going to be somewhat difficult for him to get to South America when the U.S. has shown how far it's willing to go to get him. But I'm sure Puting declining to spend tens or hundreds of thousands to fly Snoden pro-bono is still Snowden's fault. Somehow.
So, have you always been a fan of corrupt hypocritical authoritarianism, or just since Obama was elected?
If cops were held accountable to the law, there would be thousands going to jail for murder and tens of thousands for excessive force, evidence tampering, perjury, entrapment, etc. But your friendly local RAMPART division doesn't operate on a global scale.
I did, but that's the least of your problems.
You're really going to try and equivocate on this? "He is guilty." "It's illegal to take classified documents" "his legal liability" "the evidence is overwhelming". You've made it quite clear that you believe he's guilty, that the jury should not consider his actions justifiable, but you don't want him to serve time? Why yes, I would be interested in your oceanfront property in Nebraska....
Just not for the top officials breaking the laws, your attempted backpedal aside. Anyone basing an argument on the law wouldn't fly over the mountain ranges of official lawbreaking to first point fingers at the molehill of whisteblowers. Here, I'll make it easy for you. A non-authoritarian, non-monarchist hack would say:
"I want Snowden to stand trial, but thousands of officials from the NSA/CIA/Pentagon/State Department/White House better be in jail before him, since their crimes came first, are far more numerous, and far more severe."
But that's not the argument any of you are making.
Because Angela Merkel is really a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda. Before you play the "every body does that" defense, name which countries are even capable of spying on Obama's Blackberry.
Which is why calls were 100 to 1 against telecom immunity in 2008, from across the ideological spectrum. Because if there's one thing a majority of Americans want, it's corrupt unaccountable Big Brother spying on the entire planet. And that's before getting to the naked hackery of NBC's polling. You run a poll asking 'do you support Snowden taking classified documents to Putin's Russia?!?!?' and are surprised at the results? How about 'do you support whisteblowers when they reveal top officials breaking the law hundreds of times a second every day of the week'?
Is this perfromance art, or did you bring enough hallucenegic drugs for everybody? Cuz you're on some mighty powerful acid if you're seriously suggesting we need to spend hundreds of billions to tap the personal communications of our closest allies.
It doesn't work to blame Snowden for ending up in Putin's Russia when it was Clinton's State Department who canceled his passport on his way to South America. And for having the president of Ecuador's plane forced down because he might have been carrying Snowden on board.
Probable cause, warrants, grand jury hearings, trial, lawyers, right to appeals
vs
No probable cause, illegal/secret evidence, no warrant, flown to a gulag or third world dictatorship, torture, no right to a lawyer much less an appeal, military kangaroo court under unlawful command influence, and then tortured with force-feeding when you start a hunger protest at your continued incarceration five years after your incacerators have cleared you for release.
Oh yeah, they're totally the same thing!
You authoritarian monarchist hacks out yourselves by spending soooo much time talking about how Snowden deserves to go to jail, but say nothing about the lawbreaking and lawbreakers revealed by Snowden. Not one word on Clapper going to jail for perjury, not one word for imprisoning Alexander for FISA violations, not one word on impeaching the POTUS for overseeing it all.
5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each violation of FISA laws. But this was never about the law, for you.
The U.S. has gulags: they're called Bagram Prison and Guantanomo. Where Obama is busy force-feeding prisoners (which is torture) that have been cleared for release for five years.
Do you have any smarter fascist troll friends that could do this for you?
You're repeating Big Lies as if makes them true, when it only makes you a bigger and more pathetic liar. That or a useful idiot for other liars - neither option looks good on you.
I'd wave it and make those who repeat stupid bullshit reflexively mule-kick themselves in the balls. Treason is the only crime spelled out in the Constitution, and for good reason - so fuckhead monarchists like the AC here can't sling it against anyone they don't like.
Speaking of fuckheads, what about the lawbreaking revealed by Snowden? You guys out yourselves as pathetic hacks when you aren't demanding the impeachment and incarceration of top level officials, from Clapper to Alexander to the POTUS himself, at the same time that you're demanding Snowden's head.
If not, that's a fair amount of obnoxious presumption.
Then you're right about one thing: someone here knows nothing about the concept of data or the fallacy of anecdotes.
Any excuse to dodge the fact that more men are raped than women. You either care about the victims of rape, or you don't.
Batshit irrelevant. Men make up the majority of rape victims, and that's something that Demagogue Culture is going to have to deal with. You also skated around the sexual abuse of juvenile prisoners story where it was women committing most of the abuse.
Or maybe he does.
And I'm sure you could go down to Sturgis and find a couple adults that have gotten into a motorcycle accident at 60 mph with no helmet and walked away because they landed in a lake, or something. Would you take those two anecdotes and say that getting in a 60 mph bike accident with no helmet is no big whoop?
I'm still waiting for superpowers to carve out a homeland - from other people's lands of course - for the Romani (Gypsies). Because they've also faced discrimination for millennia, and Nazis slaughtered them with as much enthusiasm as they slaughtered the Jews. But the Romani didn't get a homeland, billions a year in free weapons, and carte blanche to bomb and murder their neighbors.
Why is that?
If Obama is comfortable violating other nation's sovereignty with drone strikes, I'm sure he'd be comfortable with the CIA putting a bag over someone's head and tossing him in the back of a van without the knowledge of said someone's government.
I'm still waiting for Saudi Arabia to be made democratic. What's not to invade?
1) Muslim theocratic dictatorship. Check.
2) Oil. Check and check.
3) Where the 911 hijackers were actually from.
Pretty easily to verify with Google:
And that's just from prisons. There's also more men assaulted in the military:
To which there is a frequent "yeahbut women under-report rape", to which there is an easy "and that's different from men how"? That's 14,000 men in a macho man-up culture that have admitted to rape, so the real number is going to be much higher as well.
Let Gabe rake in the cash on Steam, but spin off a Games division that only has to worry about...making games. Then we'd already have Portal 3 & Half Life 3 instead of holding our breaths Forever.
More men are raped than women (see: prison and military) overall. No doubt someone steeped in Demagogue Culture will complain that bringing up that fact is unfair because a man being raped dozens or more times in prison over the course of his sentence isn't the same thing as a college coed being attacked in a dark alley. Which means the latter is worse. Or something.
Demagogue Culture trolls will stop being full of crap when they start talking about female teachers raping male high school students in terms of "rape culture" along with the coed in the ally. Or when you can read a story like this and have "rape culture" mentioned every other sentence.
Childish deflection. Attacking an entire group of people based on the actions of .000001% of that group is always bullshit, no matter who it's coming from or who it's directed at.
Ah, the "if the shoe fits, wear it" defense. The same crap that right wingers like Rush Limbaugh say right after they've been called out for smearing women, minorities, or gays. "Oh, I didn't mean your group of upstanding citizens, I mean those people over there!" Always bullshit, no matter who it's coming from or who it's directed at.
Men are more likely to be raped (see: prison and the military) overall than women, and far more likely to be murdered. But facts need not apply in Demagogue Culture.
You first.
Low taxes have high costs.
Or have him kidnapped and flown off to some dictatorship to be tortured. Having drugs planted on you, not so bad...in comparison.
NSA is a Defense Agency, under the Department of Defense, and is headed by military officers. You were saying?