The ACLU helps you demand due process for NSA data-vacuuming whistleblower Edward Snowden, if and when our government catches him. You will not, in signing on to this effort, demand that Mr. Snowden be found innocent of a crime (our government has charged him with at least two offenses covered by the 1917 Espionage Act); you will simply demand that he get everything an accused person in America should get, like access to a lawyer and decent treatment while awaiting trial. In other words, you'll be demanding that our government do better with Mr. Snowden that it did with Mr. Manning, who was forced to sleep naked on a sheetless bed in solitary confinement. Folks who follow politics like it's football admire Mr. Obama for keeping his internal affairs drama-free and leak-free. But those of us who follow events because we value freedom suspect Mr. Obama's relentless pursuit of whistleblowers (whether they expose NSA surveillance or FDA incompetence) has become a mania.
But wait! There's more! Eight U.S. Reps, including Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Todd Rokita (R-IN), have introduced H.R. 2475, which would force the FISA Court to reveal its legal reasoning behind NSA surveillance programs. The bill doesn't have any text entered for it at thomas.loc.gov just yet, but you would not be out of order to phone your Reps and Senators and express your belief that, as Justice Brandeis used to say, "sunlight is the best disinfectant." Meanwhile, H.R. 2399, a production of Reps. Polis (D-CO), Conyers (D-MI) and Amash (R-MI), would also force the FISA Court to reveal its secret opinions to Congress and (in summary form) to the public, while also restraining our government's surveillance power under the PATRIOT Act. And H.R. 2399's 34 co-sponsors include 14 Republicans, Walter Jones naturally among them, but Paul Broun and Tom McClintock also among them. You want to call your Congressfolk about H.R. 2399? Who will dare stop you?
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