Two years later, the White House finally addressed a “We the
People” online petition to grant Edward Snowden a pardon with a lame and
predictable response: No. There was more to the response than that, but I won’t
waste your time with a rehash of the baseless accusations and fear mongering
we’ve heard before. The argument from a Homeland Security official regarding
Snowden is as convincing as hearing the DEA’s BS for keeping marijuana a
schedule 1 drug in the same class as Heroin and meth.
For all of the passing grades Obama gets in a variety of
areas, he deserves a big, fat F for national security. He’s done virtually
nothing to undo Bush’s most egregious attacks on the Constitution and due process,
and seems to be letting the national security state run itself. Big mistake.
Snowden is one of the twenty-first century’s genuine heroes, and deserves a
ticker tape parade in Manhattan, not a jail cell in Leavenworth.
Our government still loves to taunt Snowden with the “come
back and take the consequences like a man” canard, as if he would be enticed by
such schoolyard nonsense. Snowden is a smart person. He knows that he would not
be treated fairly or justly if he returned to America and it’s more of an
indictment of this country that he’s right than any black mark on Snowden’s
record. What angers our government more than any other aspect of the Snowden
revelations is that he is a free man and not rotting in a dungeon somewhere as
an example to other would be whistleblowers.
In a just and true democracy, Snowden would be pardoned. America
is neither.
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