Chuck Schumer was on This Week, blathering on about how Edward Snowden should just come home and “tell his story to a jury.” But Chuck is either stupid, or lying. From the Freedom of the Press Foundation:

In reality, none of that information would be heard by a jury, if prior Espionage Act cases against leakers are any guide. Judges have ruled evidence of showing intent to inform the public, benefits of the leaks, and lack of damage to national security is inadmissible. We made this point just two weeks ago, but it seems worth repeating since it seems as though members of Congress opining on Snowden’s legal options do not know how the law works. Here are how four of the most recent Espionage Act leak cases have turned out:

• John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer who was the first to go on-the-record with the media about waterboarding, pled guilty in his Espionage Act case last year partially because a judge ruled he couldn’t tell the jury about his lack of intent to harm the United States.

• In the ongoing leak trial of former State Department official Stephen Kim, the judge recently ruled that the prosecution “need not show that the information he allegedly leaked could damage U.S. national security or benefit a foreign power, even potentially.” (emphasis added)
• In the Espionage Act case against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake (which later fell apart), the government filed two separate motions to make sure the words “whistleblowing” or “overclassification” would never be uttered at trial.

• In Chelsea Manning’s trial this summer, Manning’s defense wanted to argue she intended to inform the public, that the military was afflicted with a deep and unnecessary addiction to overclassification, and that the government’s own internal assessments showed she caused no real damage to U.S. interests. All this information was ruled inadmissible until sentencing. Manning was sentenced to thirty-five years in jail—longer than most actual spies under the Espionage Act.

At this point, it’s time for the media to start pushing back on government officials suggesting Snowden should tell his story to a jury, when caselaw says he would be barred from doing so. The New York Times is aware of this fact, as they mentioned it in another article published Sunday about the chances of Snowden receiving clemency. But in their story about Schumer’s comments, they let his false statement go uncorrected.

It’s also time for Congress to start debating the merits of using the Espionage Act on the sources of journalists. If Sen. Schumer thinks that Snowden should be able to tell all of the above information to a jury, we look forward to his amicus brief in a potential Snowden trial aruging that a whistleblower defense should be admissible. In the mean time, he and other members of Congress concerned about whistleblowers getting a fair trial should push for reform or repeal of the Espionage Act.

H/t Attorney Karin Riley Porter.

Now it turns out it will be more of a “framework,” with nothing to sign and nothing will really change. Boy, it was a exhilarating twenty minutes or so when it looked like the U.S. was no longer willing to be Israel’s bitch, huh?

The song remains the same…

Dear Lord, these people are astoundingly resistant to introspection. Via the Sideshow:

Here’s an astonishing piece of crap from Alan Dershowitz:

As far as Greenwald is concerned, he’s an ideologue. I don’t think he would have revealed this information if it had been critical of Venezuela or Cuba or the Palestinian Authority. You know, he doesn’t like America. He doesn’t like Western democracies. He’s never met a terrorist he didn’t like. So he’s a very hard-left ideologue that uses this to serve his political agenda not simply to reveal information in a neutral way. That makes him very different from WikiLeaks, I think.

I love the idea that (a) a concerned citizen should be criticizing other countries when their own government is clearly violating the rights of its citizens and (b) when you know the most powerful country in the world is committing egregious crimes and atrocities, you should aim all of your criticisms at Venezuela. Because they are so much more of a threat to the world, I guess. It’s like saying that Germans during the rise of the Third Reich should have been pointing with alarm at Ecuador or something.

H/t Steve Duckett

The NYT editorialized about Snowden yesterday, saying he deserved a much lighter punishment in light of his whistleblower status. The Atlantic responds to pushback from Business Insider’s Josh Barro:

Where this goes wrong is imagining that a plea bargain or some form of clemency (or even a presidential pardon) for Snowden would set a precedent or legitimize a general rule of any kind. It would not. The concepts of pardon and clemency are part our system precisely because there are instances when applying rules we’ve generally decided upon would be unjust and counterproductive. They are meant to be used judiciously, on an ad hoc basis, in what are clearly exceptional circumstances.

Snowden’s leak meets those tests. Urging clemency for Snowden is not a radical case against our existing system of rules–it is an acknowledgment that, like all rules, ours are imperfect. One of the finest presidents, George Washington, pardoned farmers who took up arms against the federal government (!) to protest a tax on whiskey. He wouldn’t have granted those pardons had he thought that he was making a radical case against the legitimacy of the U.S. government or setting a precedent for anti-tax insurrections. And it is difficult to argue that any such precedent was set, even at the dawn of the federal republic when norms were still being established.
Continue reading “Clemency for Edward Snowden” →

Considering how much we know of Israel spying on the U.S., I mean:

Report US snooped on Israel revives calls to free spy (via AFP)

Israel’s intelligence minister called reported US wiretapping of an Israeli premier “unacceptable” amid renewed calls Sunday for the release of jailed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. “We have of late exceptional intelligence relations with the United…