American Exceptionalism on display by Boy Scouts of America Scout leaders?

Scout leaders jubilantly knock over 170m-year-old rock formation in Utah

Outrage after triumphant video of destruction by Boy Scouts of America leaders in Goblin Valley state park goes on YouTube

theguardian.com, Friday 18 October 2013 21.00 EDT

An online video of two Boy Scouts of America leaders knocking over a 170m-year-old rock formation in a Utah state park has touched off worldwide outrage, state officials said on Friday, and the two men may face charges.

The video was posted on YouTube showing scout leader Glenn Taylor dislodging the massive rock free from its tiny perch in Goblin Valley state park as Dave Hall films him while singing and laughing.

"We, we have now modified Goblin Valley!" Hall shouts into the camera. "A new Goblin Valley exists with this boulder down here at the bottom!"

The rock formation, known as a "goblin," dates to the late Jurassic era and is one of many that give the desert park a surreal appearance that draws visitors from around the world.

The video has been viewed more than 2m times since it was uploaded to YouTube by the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper on Thursday. The Utah state parks director, Fred Hayes, said his office had been inundated with angry calls and emails.

"Literally from around the world," Hayes said. "Folks who have either been there [to Goblin Valley state park] or even just seen pictures of it. The South-western desert has a lot of appeal for a lot of people and they are just outraged."

Hayes said authorities first became aware of the video when a visitor posted a link to it on the state parks website, asking if such activity was legal. Prosecutors in Emery County will determine if charges would be filed, he said.

“BE PREPARED”

The two scout leaders told the Deseret News they toppled the boulder because they thought it posed a danger to children who might be walking by – an explanation that the state parks director greeted with some scepticism.

"Neither one of us were out there intending to do illegal activity," Hall said. "It just made sense to us at the time – remove the danger so that we don't have to hear about somebody dying."

Hayes said park rangers walked through the valley daily and had never considered the boulder to be a danger, noting that it took considerable effort for Taylor to shove it over.

"That's a real leap in logic for me to get there, based on what I see in the video," he said. "I can't get inside their head but that's not the way it looks to me."

A Boy Scouts of America spokesman said the organisation was reviewing the matter and would take appropriate action.

"We are shocked and disappointed by this reprehensible behavior. For more than a century, the Boy Scouts of America has been a leader in conservation – from stewardship to sustainability," Boy Scouts spokesman Deron Smith said.

"The isolated actions of these individuals are absolutely counter to our beliefs and what we teach," he said.

US complicity in the deaths and injuries of Iraqis. If Iraq had killed 4% of Americans, it would be 12 million people dead.

The American Genocide Against Iraq: 4% of Population Dead as result of US sanctions, wars

Posted on 10/17/2013 by Juan Cole

A new household survey of Iraqis has projected the civilian death toll from the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq at roughly 450,000. Passive information-gathering techniques like logging deaths in the Western press have produced estimates closer to 150,000, but such techniques have been proven to miss a lot of people. (To my knowledge no one was counting all the deaths reported in the some 200 Arabic-language Iraqi newspapers in the 2000s, so even the passive information-gathering was limited. And, the Wikileaks US military log of civilian deaths did not overlap very much with e.g. Iraq Body Count, so both of them were missing things the other caught.)

Of those extra deaths beyond those who would have died if the US had never invaded, some 270,000 died violently, with US troops responsible for about 90,000 civilian deaths and militias for another 90,000. Of those killed violently, 60 percent were shot, and 12 percent died from car bombs. Some 180,000 died because of the destruction of the public health infrastructure (lack of access to hospital treatment, e.g.).

Despite the horrific total, this estimate for 2003-2011 is smaller than the Lancet study of some years ago, which was done under wartime conditions. The authors admit, however, that the death toll could have been even higher; this total is a projection based on 2000 interviews.

The US/ UN sanctions on Iraq of the 1990s, which interdicted chlorine for much of that decade and so made water purification impossible, are estimated to have killed another 500,000 Iraqis, mainly children. (Infants and toddlers die easily from diarrhea caused by gastroenteritis, which causes fatal dehydration).

So the US polished off about a million Iraqis from 1991 through 2011, large numbers of them children. The Iraqi population in that period was roughly 25 million, so the US killed or created the conditions for the killing of 4% of the Iraqi population.

If Iraq had killed 4% of Americans, it would be 12 million people dead.

Iraq did not attack the United States. It did attack Iran in 1980, but by 1983 the US was an ally in Iraq’s war against Iran. It also attacked Kuwait, which it occupied quite bestially, but it was out by spring 1991. There was no casus belli or legitimate legal cause of war in 2003. Iraq’s main crime appears to have been to be an oil state not compliant with US demands.

All this is horrible enough. Even more horrible is that the US occupation of Iraq sparked a Sunni Arab insurgency, which is still vigorous. Insurgencies typically take 10 to 15 years to subside. Some 5000 Iraqi civilians have been killed so far this year by that insurgency. US occupation is the gift that goes on giving.

Despite the Bush administration’s violation of the UN charter and its war crimes in Iraq, none of its high officials has faced prosecution. Some of them even have the gall to come on television from time to time to urge more killing.

Where is Juan Cole wrong?

Top 10 Ways Ted Cruz & the Tea Party Weakened America with Shutdown

Posted on 10/18/2013 by Juan Cole

1. The Cruz/Tea Party shut down of the US government cost the US economy $24 billion

2. As a result of the shutdown, fourth quarter growth will be only 2.4% instead of the expected 3%

3. 250,000 jobs will likely have been lost

4. Communist China took advantage of the crisis to push for a de-Americanized world

5. China renewed its push to dump the US dollar as the international reserve currency. That step would cost the US economy enormously.

6. The US ability to sanction Iran and Syria was weakened

7. Iran is now wondering if it can do a deal with Obama, given the gridlock in Congress

8. The shutdown helped the morale of the Taliban extremists fighting US troops and undermined the morale of American troops

9. The shutdown prevented President Obama from attending the summit in Indonesia of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization. Chinese President Xi Jinping took leadership of the summit instead. The US was prevented from showing leadership in the Pacific Rim.

10. America lost trust and soft power on the international scene.

Cruz and the Tea Party deeply harmed American law & values, and they are
much more dangerous than Edward Snowden (whom they consider a traitor but whom most Americans think did us a favor.) Snowden is in hiding in Russia. These guys are strutting around capitol hill, having much diminished it.

Waterloo on the Potomac

The Kings of the Hill

Does it matter if we keep digging ourselves into a hole. Lets consult a pangolin:

Senate leaders within striking distance of deal to end shutdown, raise debt limit

By Lori Montgomery and Rosalind S. Helderman, Published: October 14 - WASHINGTON POST

Senate leaders said late Monday that they were closing in on a deal to raise the federal debt limit and end the two-week-old government shutdown, just days before the Treasury Department exhausts its ability to borrow.

The emerging agreement would extend the Treasury Department’s borrowing authority until Feb. 7, reopen the government and fund federal agencies through mid-January, according to aides and lawmakers familiar with the negotiations.

In the meantime, policymakers would launch a new round of talks over broader budget issues in hopes of developing a plan to replace deep automatic spending cuts known as the sequester before Jan. 15. That is when the next round of sequester cuts is scheduled to slice another $20 billion out of agency budgets, primarily from the Pentagon.

The framework under consideration includes only minor changes to President Obama’s signature health-care law, falling well short of defunding it or delaying major provisions as conservative Republicans initially sought. Instead, Republicans would get only new safeguards to ensure that people who receive federal subsidies to purchase health insurance under the law are eligible to receive them.

But talks were hung up over another provision, aides and lawmakers said: a demand by Democrats to delay the law’s “belly button tax,” a levy on existing policies that is set to add $63 per covered person — including spouses and dependents — to the cost of health insurance next year. Republicans derided the proposal as a special favor to organized labor.

Meanwhile, Democrats were resisting a GOP demand to deny Treasury Secretary Jack Lew the use of special measures to extend his borrowing power past Feb. 7. That would give Congress a firm deadline for the next debt-limit increase, with no wiggle room for Treasury Department accountants.

Despite those points of contention, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared confident that they had developed a framework that could win the approval of Congress and spare the country from a first-ever default on the national debt.

“We’ve had a good day,” McConnell said in a speech closing the Senate for the evening. “I think it’s safe to say we’ve made substantial progress and we look forward to making more progress in the future.”

Reid agreed. “We’ve made tremendous progress. We are not there yet, but tremendous progress. And everyone just needs to be patient,” he said. “Perhaps tomorrow will be a bright day.”

The big question mark Monday evening was whether the emerging agreement could win the approval of the Republican-controlled House, where a small bloc of conservatives has managed to direct GOP strategy.

While McConnell and Reid were at work on a bipartisan compromise, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was continuing to promote a more partisan bill that would lift the debt limit for only six weeks.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) met midafternoon with McConnell and then huddled with his own leadership team. Afterward, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) declined to say what path the House would take.

“There’s a lot of different options we still have,” McCarthy said, adding that passing the Ryan plan is “always a possibility.”

There were signs that some House conservatives were growing anxious about the Senate talks. Rep. Raúl R. Labrador (R-Idaho), one of the most hard-line conservatives in the House, accused his Senate colleagues of “pussyfooting around” in the budget battle.

“The problem with Senate Republicans is that they always want to have a fight the next time,” Labrador said on CNN.

But Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a close Boehner ally, said he was confident that McConnell would not sign off on a deal unless Boehner was convinced that it could win a broad majority of Republicans.

“McConnell, I don’t think, will deliberately put us in a bad position,” Cole said, adding that any agreement that creates a process to litigate broader budget issues would achieve an important GOP goal. “If you’re able to do that and you’re able to get some savings out of the entitlement portion of the budget, those aren’t Republican defeats. They are Republican victories.”

After weeks in which no one was negotiating about anything, Monday was a day of near-constant activity. It began with a two-hour gathering of a bipartisan group of 12 senators led by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the primary sponsor of a separate proposal that appeared to gain strength Friday before fizzling amid Democratic opposition over the weekend.

After that meeting, the Republican members briefed McConnell and the Democrats briefed Reid. Collins said the group was “continuing to discuss the parameters of a deal” but acknowledged that “there really is a focus on leadership right now.”

Later, Reid ventured twice from his office just off the Senate floor, around the corner and down the hall to McConnell’s office, where the two spoke face to face. At midday, McConnell and Boehner met — the speaker was spied briefly as he made his way down a back hallway from his office to McConnell’s suite for a 25-minute update.

The White House had announced in the morning that Reid, McConnell, Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would come downtown at 3 p.m. to brief the president on their progress. But that meeting was postponed amid concern that it would interrupt the talks just as they were making headway.

With lawmakers trickling slowly back into Washington after a weekend at home, Republican leaders in both chambers decided to delay briefing rank-and-file lawmakers about the day’s developments until everyone was in town Tuesday morning.

It was unclear how things would proceed from there.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), the ringleader of the failed effort to attack the health-care law, waved off questions from reporters about whether he would try to block the Senate from approving an agreement, if one were reached.

“We need to see what the details are,” he said repeatedly.

But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another conservative, said he has little appetite for obstruction, even if he does not like the final deal. “We need to get an agreement and open the government back up,” he said.

Still, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who has been close to the talks, acknowledged that the emerging agreement would be “a tough vote.” The misguided assault on the health-care law had diverted attention from more meaningful efforts to overhaul the tax code and rein in spending on Medicare and Social Security, he said. And now time has run out for achieving those goals.

“Let’s just spell out what’s happened: We’ve basically blown the last two months with some of our members and a lot of the House focused on a shiny object that was never going to happen,” he said. “To try to put something together in three days that has meaningful things we all would like to see in it is just not possible.”

As talks intensified, Obama warned that if the standoff is not resolved by Thursday, when the Treasury Department will run out of borrowing authority, “we stand a good chance of defaulting.”

U.S. financial markets fell slightly in morning trading but then stabilized. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average each dropped about 0.5 percent in the first 90 minutes of trading before rebounding to close with gains. In a more telling sign of market sentiment, the Vix, a measure of expected future volatility in stock markets, soared more than 12 percent before ending the trading day up 2.2 percent.

Bond markets were closed for the Columbus Day holiday. In recent days, investors have sold off short-term Treasury bills maturing later in October, fearful that there could be disruptions that prevent the government from making good on its obligations.

Jackie Kucinich contributed to this report.

The Permanent War Party and the corrupt US Corporate Media - the media continues to present former military and government officials as venerated experts without informing the public of their industry ties – the personal financial interests that may be shaping their opinions of what is in the national interest.

“…Nor does American have any interest in Syria beyond the well being of its people…” Barack Obama

HAT TIP: RUFUS

Conflicts of interest in the Syria debate

An analysis of the defense industry ties of experts and think tanks who commented on military intervention

October 11, 2013

Public Accountability

(download pdf of report)

Authors: Gin Armstrong, Whitney Yax, Kevin Connor

Media contact: Kevin Connor, 718-916-0925, kevin@public-accountability.org

Read coverage: Washington Post

This report has been updated – please see the correction.

During the public debate around the question of whether to attack Syria, Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush, made a series of high-profile media appearances. Hadley argued strenuously for military intervention in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV, and authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.”

In each case, Hadley’s audience was not informed that he serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential strike against Syria. Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley’s share’s worth $891,189). Despite this financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert.

Though Hadley’s undisclosed conflict is particularly egregious, it is not unique. The following report documents the industry ties of Hadley, 21 other media commentators, and seven think tanks that participated in the media debate around Syria. Like Hadley, these individuals and organizations have strong ties to defense contractors and other defense- and foreign policy-focused firms with a vested interest in the Syria debate, but they were presented to their audiences with a veneer of expertise and independence, as former military officials, retired diplomats, and independent think tanks.

The report offers a new look at an issue raised by David Barstow’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series on the role military analysts played in promoting the Bush Administration’s narrative on Iraq. In addition to exposing coordination with the Pentagon, Barstow found that many cable news analysts had industry ties that were not disclosed on air.

If the recent debate around Syria is any guide, media outlets have done very little to address the gaps in disclosure and abuses of the public trust that Barstow exposed. Some analysts have stayed the same, others are new, and the issues and range of opinion are different. But the media continues to present former military and government officials as venerated experts without informing the public of their industry ties – the personal financial interests that may be shaping their opinions of what is in the national interest.

This report details these ties, in addition to documenting the industry backing of think tanks that played a prominent role in the Syria debate. It reveals the extent to which the public discourse around Syria was corrupted by the pervasive influence of the defense industry, to the point where many of the so-called experts appearing on American television screens were actually representatives of companies that profit from heightened US military activity abroad. The threat of war with Syria may or may not have passed, but the threat that these conflicts of interest pose to our public discourse – and our democracy – is still very real.

Key Findings

The media debate surrounding the question of whether to launch a military attack on Syria in August and September of 2013 was dominated by defense industry-backed experts and think tanks. These individuals and organizations are linked to dozens of defense and intelligence contractors, defense-focused investment firms, and diplomatic consulting firms with strong defense ties, yet these business ties were rarely disclosed on air or in print. This report brings transparency to these largely undocumented and undisclosed connections.

For more on the methodology used to identify commentators, think tanks, and industry ties, please see the “Methodology” section below.

Commentators

• 22 commentators. The report identifies 22 commentators who weighed in during the Syria debate in large media outlets, and who have current industry ties that may pose conflicts of interest. The commentators are linked to large defense and intelligence contractors like Raytheon, smaller defense and intelligence contractors like TASC, defense-focused investment firms like SCP Partners, and commercial diplomacy firms like the Cohen Group.
• 111 appearances, 13 attempts at disclosure. These commentators made 111 appearances – as op-ed authors, quoted experts, or news show guests – in major media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post. Despite the commentators’ apparent financial and professional stakes in military action, major media outlets typically failed to disclose these relationships, noting them, often incompletely, in only 13 of the 111 appearances (see table below for media outlet breakdown).
• Varying types of conflicts of interest. In some cases, commentators have undisclosed industry ties that pose significant and direct conflicts of interest. In other cases, the undisclosed ties were less direct, but still suggest that the commentator has a financial interest in continuing heightened levels of US military action abroad. A number of consultants are included because their business relationships are foreign policy-focused and likely involve work for defense clients, though most do not disclose client lists. One consulting relationship highlighted in the report is with the Department of Defense – not an industry connection, but a significant conflict of interest.
• Largely supportive of military action. The commentators profiled have largely expressed support for military action in Syria, and many have framed the decision as an issue of national security. However, the opinions they expressed were not uniformly supportive of military action. Several commentators identified, such as Robert Scales, opposed military intervention outright. (see correction)

The following is a selection of commentators, profiled at greater length below, who have multiple undisclosed ties to the defense industry and have expressed strong support for military intervention in Syria in multiple appearances:

• Jack Keane has strongly supported striking Syria on PBS, the BBC, and Fox News. Though Keane is currently a director of General Dynamics, one of the world’s largest military services companies, and a venture partner of SCP Partners, a defense-focused investment firm, only his military and think tank affiliations were identified in all sixteen appearances.
• General Anthony Zinni has expressed support for military action in Syria during three appearances on CNN and one on CBS This Morning, and has been quoted in the Washington Post. Though a director with major defense contractor BAE Systems and an advisor to defense-focused private equity firm DC Capital Partners, only Zinni’s military experience was considered relevant by the media outlets interviewing him all five times.
• Stephen Hadley has voiced strong support for a strike on Syria in appearances on Bloomberg TV, Fox News, and CNN, as well as in a Washington Post op-ed. Though he has a financial stake in a Syria strike as a current Raytheon board member, and is also a principal at consulting firm RiceHadleyGates, he was identified all four times only as a former National Security Advisor to George W. Bush.
• Frances Townsend has appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 six times strongly favoring action in Syria. Though Townsend holds positions in two investment firms with defense company holdings, MacAndrews & Forbes and Monument Capital Group, and serves as an advisor to defense contractor Decision Sciences, only her roles as a CNN national security analyst and member of the CIA and DHS advisory committees were revealed in all six appearances.

Think Tanks

• Seven think tanks. The report profiles seven prominent think tanks with significant industry ties that weighed in on intervention in Syria. These think tanks were cited 144 times in major US publications from August 7th, 2013 to September 6th, 2013. The Brookings Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and The Institute for the Study of War were the most cited think tanks from our dataset.

• Experts with The Brookings Institution were cited in 31 articles on Syria in our dataset, more than any other think tank. Brookings is an influential think tank that is presented in the media as an independent authority, yet it receives millions in funding from the defense industry, including $1 – 2.5 million from Booz Allen Hamilton and $50,000 – $100,000 from Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Palantir Technologies. Brookings Executive Education’s Advisory Council Chair, Ronald Sanders, is a Vice President and Senior Fellow at Booz Allen Hamilton.
• The Center for Strategic and International Studies was cited in 30 articles on Syria. CSIS has ample individual connections to the defense industry through its advisors and trustees, including CSIS Senior Advisor Margaret Sidney Ashworth, Corporate Vice President for Government Relations at Northrop Grumman, and CSIS Advisor Thomas Culligan, Senior Vice President at Raytheon. CSIS President and CEO John Hamre is a director for defense contractor SAIC.
• Analysts representing The Institute for the Study of War were cited in 22 articles on Syria in our dataset. One such article by former ISW Senior Research Analyst Elizabeth O’Bagy was cited by Secretary John Kerry and Senator John McCain during congressional hearings in their effort to justify intervention.1 ISW’s Corporate Council represents a who’s who of the defense industry and includes Raytheon, SAIC, Palantir, General Dynamics, CACI, Northrop Grumman, DynCorp, and L-3 Communication.

The report also includes profiles on the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Enterprise Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the Center for American Progress. Each profile includes a selection of commentary from analysts associated with the think tank and a selection of defense industry ties. These ties are both organizational (corporate sponsorships and donations) and individual (ties through their directors, advisors, trustees, fellows, and analysts).

Methodology

Commentators were identified in articles, videos and transcripts gathered from Factiva and Google News searches, for the period August 20, 2013 to September 18, 2013. Research on the commentators’ backgrounds was then conducted, drawing on data from SEC EDGAR, news archive searches, online biographies, and other sources. Commentators with current industry ties were selected for inclusion in the report. Each piece was reviewed for relevance and only those directly related to discussions around Syria were counted toward the total. Potentially conflicted commentators were included in our dataset regardless of their support or opposition to military intervention. Where possible, videos of appearances were reviewed to determine whether industry affiliations were noted on-screen in a way that would not appear in transcripts.

The think tanks were identified through a review of articles appearing in major US publications for a slightly different period, from August 7th, 2013 to September 6th, 2013, and included the keyword “Syria” in the headline and/or lede paragraph. Searches were conducted using the Factiva database. Each article was reviewed for relevance to the Syria intervention debates. Only articles directly related to discussions around Syria were counted toward the total. Research was then conducted on the think tanks’ industry ties through reviews of annual reports, news articles, SEC data, and sources such as Right Web (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/), a database which includes extensive information on some of the think tanks profiled in the report.

In each case, data was reviewed and compiled on LittleSis.org (the opposite of Big Brother), PAI’s investigative research platform. The data in this report is available on LittleSis.org. At times, citations link to LittleSis.org profiles; additional, original sources for information about these individuals and organizations can be found on these pages.

Commentators and think tanks were included if they had significant current ties to the following types of firms:

• Defense and intelligence contractors.
• Investment firms with a significant defense or intelligence focus.
• Consulting firms with a significant focus on defense, intelligence, or commercial diplomacy.

Some consulting firms identified in the report function as shadow diplomatic firms, working for foreign governments and corporate clients seeking overseas business. These firms, such as the Albright Stonebridge Group, usually do not disclose their clients, so it can be difficult to discern their defense industry ties. In the absence of disclosure, this report includes these firms, and notes their defense ties where possible. Regardless of whether they have defense clients, principals at these firms likely have business relationships that complicate their public personas as expert foreign policy commentators.

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE AS TO HOW THE US GOVERNMENT EXAMINES ITSELF WITHOUT A CONFLICT OF INTEREST:

Human torture in Guantanamo - Courtesy of the US Government

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, from his asylum in Russia, accepted an award on Wednesday from a group of former U.S. intelligence officials expressing support for his decision to divulge secrets about the NSA's electronic surveillance of Americans and people around the globe.

WHO IS THE TRAITOR?

The award, named in honor of the late CIA analyst Sam Adams, was presented to Snowden at a ceremony in Moscow by previous recipients of the award bestowed by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII). The presenters included former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, former NSA official Thomas Drake, and former Justice Department official Jesselyn Radack, now with the Government Accountability Project. (Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern also took part.)

Snowden showed himself not only to be in good health, but also in good spirits, and very much on top of world events, including the attacks on him personally. Shaking his head in disbelief, he acknowledged that he was aware that former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden, together with House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers, had hinted recently that he (Snowden) be put on the infamous "Kill List" for assassination. 

Snowden received the traditional Sam Adams Corner-Brighteneer Candlestick Holder, in symbolic recognition of his courage in shining light into dark places. Besides the presentation of the award, several hours were spent in informal conversation during which there was a wide consensus that, under present circumstances, Russia seemed the safest place for Snowden to be and that it was fortunate that Russia had rebuffed pressure to violate international law by turning him away.

In brief remarks from his visitors, Snowden was reassured -- first and foremost -- that he need no longer be worried that nothing significant would happen as a result of his decision to risk his future by revealing documentary proof that the U.S. government was playing fast and loose with the Constitutional rights of Americans.

Even amid the government shutdown, Establishment Washington and the normally docile "mainstream media" have not been able to deflect attention from the intrusive eavesdropping that makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment. Even Congress is showing signs of awaking from its torpor.

In the somnolent Senate, a few hardy souls have gone so far as to express displeasure at having been lied to by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander -- Clapper having formally apologized for telling the Senate Intelligence Committee eavesdropping-related things that were, in his words, "clearly erroneous" and Alexander having told now-discredited whoppers about the effectiveness of NSA's intrusive and unconstitutional methods in combating terrorism.

Coleen Rowley, the first winner of the Sam Adams Award (2002), cited some little-known history to remind Snowden that he is in good company as a whistleblower -- and not only because of previous Sam Adams honorees. She noted that in 1773, Benjamin Franklin leaked confidential information by releasing letters written by then-Lt. Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson to Thomas Whatley, an assistant to the British Prime Minister.

The letters suggested that it was impossible for the colonists to enjoy the same rights as subjects living in England and that "an abridgement of what are called English liberties" might be necessary. The content of the letters was so damaging to the British government that Benjamin Franklin was dismissed as colonial Postmaster General and had to endure an hour-long censure from British Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn.

Who's the Traitor?

Like Edward Snowden, Franklin was called a traitor for whistleblowing the truth about what the government was doing. As Franklin's biographer H.W. Brands wrote: "For an hour and a half [Wedderburn] hurled invective at Franklin, branding him a liar, a thief, an outcast from the company of all honest men, an ingrate. ... So slanderous was Wedderburn's diatribe that no London paper would print it."

Hat tip for this interesting bit of history to Tom Mullen and his Aug. 9 article in the Washington Times titled "Obama says Snowden no patriot. How would Ben Franklin's leak be treated today?" Ms. Rowley also drew from Mullen's comment:

"Tyrants slandering patriots is nothing new. History decided that Franklin was a patriot. It was not so kind to the Hutchinsons and Wedderburns. History will decide who the patriots were in the 21st century as well. It will not be concerned with health care programs or unemployment rates. More likely, it will be concerned with who attacked the fundamental principles of freedom and who risked everything to defend them.”


WHEN SNOWDEN SAW GROSS VIOLATIONS AGAINST THE LAW AND THE US CONSTITUTION HE EXPOSED THE SYSTEM: