Economy

NOW THERE'S AN OFFER THAT'S A CINCH TO REFUSE...IT'S NOT ONLY DOA, IT'S ALSO KMA (KISS MY ASS)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/us/politics/us-willing-to-hold-talks-if-snowden-pleads-guilty.html

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday that the United States was willing to discuss how the criminal case against Edward J. Snowden would be handled, but only if Mr. Snowden pleaded guilty first. Mr. Holder, speaking at a question-and-answer event at the University of Virginia, did not specify the guilty pleas the Justice Department would expect before it would open talks with Mr. Snowden’s lawyers. And the attorney general reiterated that the United States was not willing to offer clemency to Mr. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has leaked documents that American officials have said threaten national security.

“Instead,” Mr. Holder said in response to a question at the university’s Miller Center, “were he coming back to the U.S. to enter a plea, we would engage with his lawyers.”

SOMEHOW, THE US EXECUTIVE BRANCH HAS GOT TO GET OVER THE IDEA THAT THEY ARE LORDS OF THE UNIVERSE. THEY AREN'T NOW, IF THEY EVER WERE. AND THE NSA CAN'T MAKE THEM OVERLORDS, EITHER.

“I absolutely think the tide has changed for Snowden,” Jesselyn Radack, a legal adviser to Mr. Snowden and a lawyer with the Government Accountability Project, said last month. “All of these things taken together counsel in favor of some sort of amnesty or pardon.”

Mr. Holder ruled out that possibility on Thursday. “We’ve always indicated that the notion of clemency isn’t something that we were willing to consider,” he said, adding that any discussions with Mr. Snowden’s lawyers would be the “same with any defendant who wanted to enter a plea of guilty.”

Some lawmakers have also softened their stance on how Mr. Snowden’s case should be handled.

“I don’t think Edward Snowden deserves a death penalty or life in prison; I think that’s inappropriate, and I think that’s why he fled, because that’s what he faced,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, has said.

“I think, really, in the end,” Mr. Paul added, “history’s going to judge that he revealed great abuses of our government and great abuses of our intelligence community” by exposing the broad sweep of electronic surveillance by the N.S.A.

Mr. Paul said he favored “a fair trial with a reasonable sentence.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has gone even further, suggesting that the United States offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency. But Mr. Schumer said that if Mr. Snowden considered himself part of the “grand tradition of civil disobedience in this country,” he should return to stand trial. Such a legal proceeding, the senator said, could be enlightening for the country.

LET THE COUNTRY GET ENLIGHTENED SOME OTHER WAY...NOT BY SACRIFICING ITS BRIGHTEST AND BEST.