The ACLU and others have been trying to redefine the term whistleblower to include Snowden.

[hughee99]

47. Actually, I heard "old news" from the NSA defenders...

remember the "all this information was known years ago during the * administration"? That was before the "he's lying" and "he just hates Obama" defenses and well before "he's revealing state secrets" defense. I'm not sure when the "It's in our national interests" defense and the "It's all legal (now)" came up so I can't really work those into the timeline.

My favorite, though, was "The President was going to talk about this anyway", because that's just flat an out-and-out lie. President Obama may have been aware of the issues that have already been put out there, and maybe he was even planning to review and reform the NSA's practices, but I guarantee he wasn't planning on having an UNPROMPTED national conversation about what the government has been doing in the past and why we should reform it.