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  1. #1
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    Napolitano: No clemency for Edward Snowden

    January 03, 2014, 04:33 pm Napolitano: No clemency for Edward Snowden


    By Justin Sink



    Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday that she “would not put clemency on the table” for NSA leaker Edward Snowden.


    “I think Snowden has exacted quite a bit of damage and did it in a way that violated the law,” Napolitano said in an interview airing on "Meet the Press" this Sunday.



    She said damage from Snowden’s actions will be seen for years to come.

    Asked if the administration should consider a deal that would allow Snowden to avoid jail time in return for unreleased documents, Napolitano said she couldn't judge without knowing what information the former defense contractor still had.


    “But from where I sit today, I would not put clemency on the table at all,” she said.


    The New York Times and another former Obama administration official are among the voices calling for Snowden to be given a break.


    On Thursday, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former State Department director of policy planning, tweeted that she agreed with an editorial in the Times that argued Snowden was “clearly justified in believing that the only way to blow the whistle on this kind of intelligence-gathering was to expose it to the public and let the resulting furor do the work his superiors would not.”


    “Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight,” the editorial says. “He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service.”
    Last month, Richard Ledgett, who heads an National Security Agency task force handling unauthorized disclosures, suggested in a “60 Minutes” interview that the U.S. should consider a deal offering Snowden amnesty in exchange for returning additional documents outlining the government's top-secret surveillance programs.


    “My personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about,” Ledgett said. “I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part.”
    But White House press secretary Jay Carney dismissed the suggestion, saying that the administration's position on Snowden's need to return home to face justice had not changed “at all.”


    “Mr. Snowden has been accused of leaking classified information and he faces felony charges here in the United States,” Carney said.
    President Obama is spending his winter vacation reviewing a report commissioned by the White House that recommends dozens of steps the administration could take to increase transparency or impose limits on the nation’s intelligence programs.


    Among the recommendations are ending the NSA’s collection of Americans’ phone records, additional scrutiny when the decision is made to monitor foreign leaders, and new safeguards requiring the administration to obtain judicial approval before reviewing a citizen’s financial or phone records.
    Obama is expected to announce his decision on the recommendations later this month.





    video at link below

    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...cy-for-snowden



    Oh Gee Surprise Surprise!!! Hey Nappytano I think we all know how you and your comrades all feel about Snowden and his kind!!!!


  2. #2
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    NY Times Gets it Right on Edward Snowden and Barack Obama

    Posted By Bob Allen on Jan 2, 2014




    I don’t always agree with the New York Times, but when I do… is now.

    Seven months ago, the world began to learn the vast scope of the National Security Agency’s reach into the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the globe, as it collects information about their phone calls, their email messages, their friends and contacts, how they spend their days and where they spend their nights. The public learned in great detail how the agency has exceeded its mandate and abused its authority, prompting outrage at kitchen tables and at the desks of Congress, which may finally begin to limit these practices.

    The revelations have already prompted two federal judges to accuse the N.S.A. of violating the Constitution (although a third, unfortunately, found the dragnet surveillance to be legal). A panel appointed by President Obama issued a powerful indictment of the agency’s invasions of privacy and called for a major overhaul of its operations.


    All of this is entirely because of information provided to journalists by Edward Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who stole a trove of highly classified documents after he became disillusioned with the agency’s voraciousness. Mr. Snowden is now living in Russia, on the run from American charges of espionage and theft, and he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.

    Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community.

    I was laughing as I read Barack Obama’s quotes concerning his Presidential-Divine Fiat for whistle-blower protection, allegedly providing a way for Ed Snowden to have shared his concerns–that is SOOO rich, coming from a President who *specializes* in ignoring the legal path for his own desired changes to our system of government.


    Then, the Times editorial board had me roaring when it immediately took a journalistic sword to him, and tersely said Obama’s statements were total lies anyway—Snowden would not have been protected by that Executive Order. Folks, that is what real journalists do: Quote a politician’s lie, then expose it!

    In retrospect, Mr. Snowden was clearly justified in believing that the only way to blow the whistle on this kind of intelligence-gathering was to expose it to the public and let the resulting furor do the work his superiors would not.

    Well said, NYT.

    The NSA is a dangerous threat to freedom. The worst thing is that soulless men who can justify what they’ve already been doing are also more than capable of ignoring legitimate intel on a coming terrorist plot—allowing carnage—just to show us how much we “need them.” We’re on the back of a tiger.

    Thankfully, the threat from foreign terrorists is far less than the hysteria we’ve been fed in order to justify massive expenditures on the NSA, Homeland Security, TSA, etc. Truly, the biggest threat to the American way of life is from within–these rogue Federal agencies—not from without.

    Read more at http://politicaloutcast.com/2014/01/...gSICTC0zO0T.99





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