This message was self-deleted by its author
This message was self-deleted by its author (IDemo) on Tue Jun 14, 2016, 08:55 AM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
yourpaljoey
(2,166 posts)And should be in prison
BeyondGeography
(41,080 posts)
http://www.thenation.com/article/eric-holders-voting-rights-legacy/
Enforcing the Voting Rights Act became a key priority for Holder’s Justice Department. In 2012, it successfully challenged Texas’s voter ID law, South Carolina’s voter ID law, and Florida’s cutbacks to early voting under the VRA.
When the Supreme Court gutted the VRA last June, Holder vowed an aggressive response. “We will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action—using every legal tool that remains available to us—against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling by hindering eligible citizens’ full and free exercise of the franchise,” Holder said at a press conference afterward.
Since the Shelby County decision, the Justice Department has filed suit against restrictive voting laws in Texas and North Carolina and joined lawsuits challenging new voting restrictions in Ohio and Wisconsin.
Feeling the Bern
(3,839 posts)Snowden found a violation of the 4th amendment that you and your boss allowed to keep going and did not nothing to stop.
Authoritarians get not respect from me.
Hoppy
(3,595 posts)criminals, including war criminals.
He should return the money he earned as A.G.
Gregorian
(23,867 posts)Or what about dick cheney and pinhead?
Priorities, dipshit!
askeptic
(478 posts)We know there's a multi-tier system where felonies by high-ranking people are ignored, but when you expose both Clapper committing a felony on camera, and the violations of the 4th Amendment, when you show that the whistle-blower protections are literally being ignored and that there is no way to legitimately blow the whistle, it's still all about punishing Snowden.
13Dogs
(47 posts)Sorry, Eric you have zero credibility on who should be prosecuted for crimes against the US. You forfeited that willingly by not indicting Dick Fuckin Cheney... no guts,no glory, so just go away now
Tortmaster
(382 posts)Or wrong. James Clapper would never go to jail for perjury because he didn't commit perjury. Look up the law. Congress was briefed at least two times each year about all the NSA data gathering programs. Every Senator in that room had been briefed, repeatedly, about the programs, and they all voted up or down on them.
As for the whistleblowing protections, why do you even bring them up? Snowden made no attempt to contact Senator Wyden, any other Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, any Members of the House Committee, the Inspector General or anyone else described in the Whistleblower regulations.
Snowden proved two things: (1) Letting anyone decide what secrets to divulge to the public is a dangerously stupid idea that stinks of anarchy run amok, (which is why we have Whistleblower procedures enacted by our elected representatives); and,
(2) A trained spy (his claim) given months to find incriminating information, who also had unfettered access to NSA computers with Admin privileges, discovered nothing we didn't know about since 2006.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)
Bodych
(133 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/11/19/holder-chiquita-and-colombia/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/lawyer-for-chiquita-in-co_b_141919.html
Festivito
(13,879 posts)
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)Holder's failure to go after the likes of Legs Dimon or Pretty Boy Lloyd is the major failing of the Obama administration.
pmorlan1
(2,096 posts)Legs Dimon and Pretty Boy Lloyd. That's perfect! I'm gonna steal that line.
Agony
(2,605 posts)Snowden is an example of who deserves a presidential pardon for what he did as opposed to what Bill Clinton did in pardoning Marc Rich...
You got that right.
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)and should get a medal.
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)and should be in jail!
LibDemAlways
(15,139 posts)levels of US security clearance has hinted that a significant amount of information is classified only because the US is routinely breaking international law and fears being caught.
Whistleblowers like Snowdon, who blow the cover off the corruption in our government, are the good guys. He is a national hero who has been treated disgracefully.
Arazi
(8,881 posts)but thinks Snowden deserves punishment??
What a fucking laugh
TonyPDX
(962 posts)Prosecute the Cheney/Bush gang -- they did infinitely more harm to the US than Ed Snowden did by telling the truth.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)for his public service, what should we do to you for your corruption?
laserhaas
(7,805 posts)
laserhaas
(7,805 posts)If burying Goldman Sachs & Bain Capital from being indicted for racketeering..
How about you take your pissed off arse bqvk to the Wall Street fraud defense hole..you keep crawling your arse out of.
Im about to shine a big light on your incompetence
You feel me!
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)1. certain of our agents were put at risk - that is a possibility but so far nobody has actually demonstrated that it is a reality.
2. relationships with other countries were harmed - well yes because for example we really should not have been tapping the phone of chancellor merkel. Our relationships were harmed to the extent that we were exposed doing things we shouldn't have been doing. That is what whistleblowers do.
3. our ability to keep the American people safe was compromised - no it wasn't. That one is just a flat out lie.
cstanleytech
(28,461 posts)reveal legitimate gathering of intelligence on foreign countries, doing that comes close to being an act of treason.
Mind you I only said it comes close to it not that it actually was that.
To be treason he would have to have exchanged some of the information for something like safe passage though say China or if he exchanged information to Russia for amnesty but I have not seen any evidence to show that such events happened thus anyone calling him a traitor is premature at the very least.
brush
(61,033 posts)Last edited Tue May 31, 2016, 12:55 PM - Edit history (2)
There's no free lunch. The safe passage through China and the free and continuing room and board in Russia is in exchange for something.
I'd call it sedition (. . . to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof . . .).
Treason would be to take up arms against the US or to give aid and comfort to those who are, or espionage.
Poor Snowden 
, he should have stopped with the revelations of domestic spying instead of revealing details of our international covert operations. Then he would have been a hero.
Now he's a defector living off of Putin's goodwill.
Why? Let's not be naive. He's done something for Putin.
cstanleytech
(28,461 posts)would prove to me that he traded what he had to them.
Could my opinion change? Yes, of course it can but as of now it is what it is.
Also there are two prime reasons Putin could have granted him the right to stay and the first is that he gives Putin a way to say up yours to the US the other is he could use trading Snowden to the US as a bargaining chip down the road for something like for example getting the US off his back over the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
puffy socks
(1,473 posts)The man can't stop lying and he does even when it's not necessary and so he exposes his story o' baloney.
Snowden recently told NBC that he "destroyed" the extra documents, but he had previously told The New York Times that he gave them all to journalists he met in Hong Kong.
http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-wont-talk-about-russian-spies-2014-6
"whether Ed was cooperating with the Russians before he reached Moscow is a debatable question, but his status with the FSB now is not actually an open matter, as everyone who understands Russian intelligence knows. Bamford believes his subject is the first Western intelligence defector to Russia ever not to cooperate with the Kremlin’s secret services, and that is his right. It is also everyone else’s right to point out this claim is ridiculous."
https://20committee.com/2014/08/13/snowdens-new-lies-for-old/
"The interview brims with many strange and unsupported statements that portray Ed as a 21st century martyr who has offered himself as a sacrifice for America’s myriad sins against the planet. If you like this kind of thing, you like this kind of thing. Ed explains at length how easy it was for him to steal all those classified materials from the stupid NSA, and still the stupid NSA can’t figure out exactly what he did, despite Snowden’s charitably leaving behind clues, he says, to assist their investigation. If you prefer your narcissism unadulterated, this is the interview for you."
"There is, however, one substantive issue in the piece that needs to be discussed. Towards the end, Bamford dramatically explains how it was that his subject decided that he had crossed the Rubicon, while in a secret NSA facility buried deep under a pineapple plantation in Hawaii:
On March 13, 2013, sitting at his desk in the “tunnel” surrounded by computer screens, Snowden read a news story that convinced him that the time had come to act. It was an account of director of national intelligence James Clapper telling a Senate committee that the NSA does “not wittingly” collect information on millions of Americans. “I think I was reading it in the paper the next day, talking to coworkers, saying, can you believe this shit?”
Glenn Greenwald, Ed’s partner in the operation, recently admitted that he was in contact with Snowden long before Ed’s alleged awakening and decision to go rogue. In Glenn’s words: “[Ed] first tried to contact me — or did contact me back in December of 2012, when he sent me an anonymous email.”
Russian Security Expert: Snowden Is Leaving Out Key Details About Russian Spies Approaching Him
Snowden's contends that he has "no relationship with the Russian government at all" despite the fact that Kucherena, his Moscow lawyer who got him an apartment, is a Putin loyalist and serves on an FSB advisory board.
http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-wont-talk-about-russian-spies-2014-6
"Just think of these paranoid guys — they're quite paranoid in most cases," Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who co-wrote a book on the FSB, told Business Insider. "They might think, 'OK, we worked with [Snowden] for many months and if he leaves the country he will not be under our control. And the problem is that now he might start leaking things not about the NSA but the FSB, and how we treated him here.' That might be quite a natural thought for the FSB."
Soldatov does not buy the argument that Snowden must be a spy or that he even knew what would happen from the outset — just that the former NSA systems administrator is in way over his head.
The 10,000 classified NSA files Snowden stashed all over the world are highly encrypted, so the data is most likely safe (for now) even if a foreign intelligence service acquired it.
But Snowden's head is not encrypted. He is an NSA-trained hacker who "carefully read" 10,000 classified NSA files and knows his way around NSA interviews, and then managed to land in the hands of Russian intelligence.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-snowden-may-never-leave-russia-2014-3
cstanleytech
(28,461 posts)puffy socks
(1,473 posts)"Maybe they have or maybe they haven't but I haven't seen any actual evidence that would prove to me that he traded what he had to them."
You've bought the bull. I just loaded a post with evidence of such an action from months ago..and the multiple lies of Snowden which prove he is untrustworthy and would be THE FIRST EVER to not cooperate with the Kremlin.
He should be prosecuted for Treason--The betrayal of one's own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies.
It's not "mishandling".
cstanleytech
(28,461 posts)WhiteHat
(129 posts)As the former head of the DOJ, you would have had to prosecute Holder. As a private citizen, you're free to speak honestly instead.
Leave it at this: Holder performed a whistleblower's public service. He should be honored, even rewarded.
Forever and ever, amen.
Are you thinking of Snowden? Put the glass down.
Stonecarver
FairWinds
(1,717 posts)and likely Clinton show that those with connections
don't have to worry about the likes of Holder.
bravenak
(34,648 posts)msanthrope
(37,549 posts)bravenak
(34,648 posts)JCanete
(5,272 posts)life in prison not enough for you? By those standards, if you aren't a martyr who died or got totally screwed for a cause, you've got no use for the person. That scares the shit out of me that people think that way, and on DU! Who the fuck needs Republicans?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)JCanete
(5,272 posts)But at least you don't dispute that you have no problems with a government that lies to and spies on its people with impunity, so long as that nation is Merica, home of the free.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Would have been legally untouchable under the whistleblowers protection act that pertains to him...... instead he chose to listen to Glenn Greenwald and associate with the governments of China and Russia.
You may find that defensible. I do not. And I think mr. Snowden knows that that would be completely indefensible in front of a federal jury. Which is why he's holed up in Moscow.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)you think that Snowden would have totally gotten a fair shake here and that our government would have granted him whistleblower status? And what if the government had swept in and seized everything before it could have seen the light of day, using the same "highly sensitive government secrets" bullshit that seems to be enough for you to disavow Snowden now?
Snowden knows that the justice department will apply the pressure it needs to make sure that he goes away for a long long time. Our government doesn't like being exposed. That's no surprise to me. It's to be expected. That you, as an American citizen, also prefer these things to remain in the dark though, and that you speak for enough other DU members in clinging to such willful ignorance, is disturbing.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Drake, an ual whistleblower, has the courage of his convictions and didn't back down. Eddie chose to go to Hong Kong, and celebrated his 30th birthday in the Russian Embassy. Only an unrealistic narcissist would think that whistleblowing was easy. That's why Thomas Drake is a Patriots, and Edward Snowden he's a coward and a traitor.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)it wasn't a huge risk to his well-being to expose our government's illegal spying on Americans is pretty amazing to me.
Here's the bottom line. You don't care what he did, because you don't care about what the government was doing. It's easy for you to stand in judgement of a person who risked so much because you don't value the truth anyway. That's obvious because your interest is never to admit that we wouldn't have known about any of this without Snowden ... you want to draw attention only to the character of the man who brought it all to light. I guess if you can't undermine the message, you should undermine the messenger. But why? What is your motivation?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)in the Russian Embassy.
Judge for yourself who is the Patriot.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)or whether or not this person "put enough on the line" for you and your sadistic tastes when judging patriot status, but Snowden shed light on things that we the American people, charged with electing our government, need to know, and you just keep proving my point, that your only goal is to character assassinate and avoid the meat of the matter.
How does attacking the messenger not have a chilling effect on whistleblowing? Don't pretend you actually support it in any form. You don't.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)msanthrope
(37,549 posts)For running to Putin and the Chinese... Is that why you picked something that's three years old?
JCanete
(5,272 posts)In which Thomas Drake talks about how he had the benefit of the media that he thinks has become more reigned in since that time and less likely to protect whistleblowers with coverage.
And jesus christ, after reading more about this man's life, I'm just astonished that you could spout the shit you spout! Do you know how close he came to going to prison? Do you know that he exhausted all of his money and was down to public defenders, even with the media having his back? Your whole rationale for why Snowden should have trusted our justice system was that he "probably" would have gotten the same treatment as Drake, as if that is a good thing, and as if "probably" are perfectly reasonable odds to put on someone else's life.
That is seriously disturbing.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Fleeing to Russia after partying up in the Russian Embassy is a good idea?
Being a patriot is difficult. That's why so few people are. That's why actual whistleblowers... Not people like mr. Snowden... Stay and fight.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)msanthrope
(37,549 posts)JCanete
(5,272 posts)msanthrope
(37,549 posts)in 2013.....Snowden hasn't aged well on the martyr circuit. Especially while enabling Putin.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)disgusting megalomaniac, but I care about this country and what we do, first and foremost. I assure you, Snowden will age just fine, despite the efforts of you and our government to smear him.
And unless you have proof that Drake has done an about face on his strong support of Snowden's actions, you should probably shut up about your entirely baseless intuitions. At least point to something Drake said in his life that allows you to extrapolate your premise.
Lodestar
(2,388 posts)Oh wait...
Response to IDemo (Original post)
Lodestar This message was self-deleted by its author.
Response to IDemo (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
JCanete
(5,272 posts)What is it with this punitive crap? Snowden broke the law to point out that the government broke the law!!!! But you can't be arsed to say that Government officials broke the law and should be punished. You want to gloss over that little detail and go at the man who actually had to put something on the line. Good God, in the scheme of things, which crimes do you think we as the American public should be more vigilant about prosecuting?
Can I ask you how your thought process leads you to a post like this? Do you hate whistleblowers? Do you love Authoritarianism? What is it?
bemildred
(90,061 posts)laserhaas
(7,805 posts) EndElectoral
(4,213 posts)There is a price for civil disobedience and whistle blowing, but apparently not stupidity.
Blue_Tires
(57,596 posts)or preserving constitutional rights...
Then there's that whole "defecting to Moscow" -thing, but we'll table that discussion for later.
christx30
(6,241 posts)for doing that public service to discourage anyone else from doing it. Got to make sure to hide the war crimes this country commits, and make sure the spying on innocent Americans continues unabated.
Putting the Onion out of business....
warrprayer
(4,734 posts)"When high-powered attorney Eric Holder, partner in the high-power DC law firm Covington & Burling, chose to allow American Lawyer to profile him for a trial balloon about making him AG, he allowed American Lawyer to watch him work for Chiquita. While American lawyer watched, Eric Holder smooth-talked Chiquita’s CEO – the man in charge of a corporation which pled guilty to running terrorist death squads.
Chiquita funded terror to kill labor organizers in order to keep down labor costs. A very rational decision. It sends an interesting message to labor in the US to hire a man who’s worked for a corporation like that to be Attorney General. The change from the Bush Justice department is hard to see. Change we can believe in?"
https://shadowproof.com/2008/11/22/eric-holder-lawyer-for-the-death-squad-terrorists-paymasters-our-next-attorney-general/