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Obama Says He Can’t Pardon Snowden

posted by n1 on Tuesday November 22 2016, @02:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-and-no-means-no dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

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 9 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."

Will the NSA's spying and Snowden's actions come to define Obama's legacy?

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:11PM (#431286)

    "but the interpretation of the Constitution and laws is up to the courts."

    they are the final say as far as the government goes. the people are the final say period. the founders said that it was the duty of every citizen to fight against any law that was not constitutional and any law that was not in the spirit of the constitution is automatically unconstitutional.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @08:04PM (#431449)

    any law that was not in the spirit of the constitution is automatically unconstitutional

    To flesh out your points with more detail: I believe it is critically important to clearly and concisely define just what is meant by phrases such as "in the spirit of the Constitution", "unConstitutional", etc. Without an accurate, easy-to-use metric, fork-tongued lawyers can quickly drown the debate in a "legal" quagmire.

    Here's a recent draft of my current approach [soylentnews.org], and an executive summary is: the whole of US government authority cannot exceed that of a single human being's. If I do not have justification to do something to someone else, neither can I delegate authority to a government to do that same thing on my behalf.