"After being pressed by senators from both parties to call Edward Snowden a traitor, Tulsi Gabbard repeatedly refused during her confirmation hearing on Thursday morning...."

"'This is a big deal to everybody here, because its a big deal to everybody you'll also oversee,' said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who has publicly said he supports her nomination. 'So, was Edward Snowden a traitor?'Gabbard would not give a yes or no answer, saying only that she is 'committed if confirmed as Director of National Intelligence to join you in making sure that there is no future Snowden-type leak.' Lankford asked a second time if Snowden was a traitor, to which Gabbard responded,'I am focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again.'... Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) pounced on the moment, pressing her in a heated back and forth immediately after to say that Snowden is a traitor.... When she began answering without a yes or no, he interrupted, 'This is when the rubber hits the road. This is not a moment for social media.'..."

From "Tulsi Gabbard refuses to call Edward Snowden a 'traitor'" (Axios).

. @SenatorBennet starts yelling at Tulsi Gabbard after she refuses to dance the jig he requested.

You’re right Mike, that isn’t a difficult question to answer; Ed Snowden is not only NOT a traitor, Ed Snowden is an American hero.

Something you Senate swine know nothing about. pic.twitter.com/KYpusWdeC4

— Mel (@Villgecrazylady) January 30, 2025

Edward Snowden keeps trying to get people to watch this video.

Almost six million people watched this. https://t.co/shyAKE8kTV

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 12, 2023

Full video:

"Snowden is not a traitor. He did not betray the interests of his country. Nor did he transfer any information..."

"... to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly."

Said Vladimir Putin, in 2017, when the filmmaker Oliver Stone prompted him with "As an ex-KGB agent, you must have hated what Snowden did with every fiber of your being."

That's quoted today in "Putin grants citizenship to Edward Snowden, who disclosed U.S. surveillance" (WaPo).

"Despite these delusions, Ms. Gilbert — a self-described mystic who has written four books, with titles like 'Swami Soup' — mostly struck me as a New Age eccentric who could use some time away from screens."

"She disdains the mainstream media, but she agreed to be profiled, and we kept in touch. Over a series of conversations, I learned that she had a longstanding suspicion of elites dating back to her Harvard days, when she felt out of place among people she considered snobby rich kids. As an adult, she joined the anti-establishment left, advocating animal rights and supporting the Standing Rock oil pipeline protests. She admired the hacktivist group Anonymous, and looked up to whistle-blowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. She was a registered Democrat for most of her life, but she voted for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, in the 2016 presidential election after deciding that both major parties were corrupt. Ms. Gilbert’s path to QAnon began in 2016 when WikiLeaks posted a trove of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign. Shortly after, she started seeing posts on social media about something called #Pizzagate. She had dabbled in conspiracy theories before, but Pizzagate — which falsely posited that powerful Democrats were running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza parlor, and that all of this was detailed in code in the Clinton emails — blew her mind. If it was true, she thought, it would connect all of her suspicions about elites, and explain the horrible truths they had been covering up. 'The world opened up in Technicolor for me,' she said. 'It was like the Matrix — everything just started to download.' Pizzagate primed Ms. Gilbert for QAnon, which she discovered through the YouTube videos of a British psychic.... For her, QAnon was always less about Q and more about the crowdsourced search for truth. She loves assembling her own reality in real time, patching together shards of information and connecting them to the core narrative...."

"From A QAnon ‘Digital Soldier’ Marches On, Undeterred by Theory’s Unraveling/Valerie Gilbert posts dozens of times a day in support of an unhinged conspiracy theory. The story of this 'meme queen' hints at how hard it will be to bring people like her back to reality'" (NYT).

The article assumes this woman was a person of the left who — encountering QAnon — flipped into a right-winger. But it's pretty clear that the conventional left/right divide doesn't explain her. She's into New Age and conspiracies and fitting interesting, exciting ideas together. It's a quality of mind, a way of being, a way to feel and to have fun with your mind and with the internet.

Posing around pardons.

True of both Snowden and Assange. Exactly this: https://t.co/9ACi91c2UY

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 17, 2021

The elegance of Edward Snowden.

Mr. President, if you grant only one act of clemency during your time in office, please: free Julian Assange. You alone can save his life. @realDonaldTrump

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 3, 2020

A federal judge has ruled that all the money Edward Snowden makes from his books and speeches must be handed over to the federal government.

WaPo reports.

Snowden has been charged with espionage since 2013, when he exposed top-secret surveillance documents in what may have been the biggest security breach in U.S. history. The former contractor sees himself as a whistleblower compelled to reveal sweeping surveillance programs hidden from the American people. But through two administrations, the government has viewed him as a traitor who escaped justice by fleeing to Russia....

“The contractual language of the Secrecy Agreements is unambiguous,” [the judge] wrote. “Snowden accepted employment and benefits conditioned upon prepublication review obligations.”

Treason talk.

Let's look back before this week, to "treason" as it has appeared within the lifetime of this blog. In chronological order:

April 27, 2005: Discussing the "blood" metaphor in constitutional law, I quoted Article III: "The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

May 28, 2006: I wrote about the protest singer Phil Ochs declaring the Vietnam War over:

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is too young to die
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over

July 1, 2006: "The editors of The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times explain how they decide when to publish a secret... Baquet and Keller have written a lengthy defense of their behavior, behavior that they know has been severely criticized, even called 'treason.'"

September 20, 2006: "To me, that's treason. I call it treason against rock-and-roll, because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics," said Alice Cooper, indicting rock stars who were telling people to vote for John Kerry.

August 3, 2007: Markos Moulitsas says that in 2002, "Dissent against the president was considered treason."

August 11, 2007: A 9/11 truther criticizes me for declining to debate him, which he took to mean that I know I'm "complicit in covering up mass murder and high treason."

May 12, 2008: A scholar assures us that the Muslim world would view Obama, the son of a Muslim father, as guilty of apostasy, which has "connotations of rebellion and treason," which is considered "worse than murder."

September 12, 2011: I'm live-blogging a debate in which "treason" is thrown around casually: "Perry stands by his 'almost treasonous' remark, referring to the use of the Federal Reserve for political purposes... Huntsman accuses Perry of treason for saying we can't secure the border."

May 8, 2012: "Isn't it funny, this 'treason' incident?" Mitt Romney, running for President, failed to chide a woman who asked whether Obama should be tried for treason. I brought up (as I did today), the 1964 book "None Dare Call It Treason." I also quoted the casual use of "treason" by Chief Justice John Marshall  Cohens v. Virginia to refer to doing something unconstitutional. ("We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the Constitution.") And a commenter brought up an even more venerable use of the word, Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it." That made me say: "The country was founded on treason. We celebrate the treason we like."

Also on May 8, 2012: "Obama supporters who express outrage over the use of the word 'treason' seem to think the word means nothing but to the crime defined in law — as if the woman Romney talked to wanted Obama tried and executed. It's as if people who say 'property is theft' are freakishly insisting that property owners be prosecuted for larceny. Think of all the words we use that have more specific legal meanings that do not apply: This job is murder... The rape of the land... Slave to love..."

June 17, 2013: Edward Snowden explains why he left the country: " [T]he US Government... immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it."

July 26, 2013: From a post about the death penalty: "Here's the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, which found the death penalty for rape (even rape of a child) to be unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. No one has been executed in the U.S. for a crime other than murder since the 1960s, though the Kennedy case leaves open the possibility of capital punishment 'for other non-homicide crimes, ranging from drug-trafficking to treason.'"

April 22, 2014 : Above the Law had hyperventilated, "Justice Scalia Literally Encourages People To Commit Treason," and I punctured it, saying Scalia was just giving his usual speech about the Constitution, which is always subject to the right of revolution explained in the Declaration of Independence. I bring up Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it."

February 23, 2015: "'Edward Snowden couldn't be here for some treason,' said Neil Patrick Harris, the Oscars host, when the documentary about him won an award." I said: "I liked the joke, because of its language precision and because it seemed at least a tad risky in the context of Hollywood celebrating itself."

February 29, 2016: Trump hesitated to "unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election" after Duke it would be "treason to your heritage" for a white person not to vote for Trump.

October 14, 2016: "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree," said Ezra Pound, who was charged with treason in WWII. He was disaffected after WWI, moved to Italy, felt inspired by Mussolini, and went on the radio criticizing the U.S., FDR, and the Jews.

December 21, 2016: I quoted the official course description for "The Problem of Whiteness," a course offered in the African Cultural Studies department of my university, the University of Wisconsin–Madison: "In this class, we will ask what an ethical white identity entails, what it means to be #woke, and consider the journal Race Traitor’s motto, 'treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.'"

January 16, 2017: I quote someone talking about Chelsea Manning: "He is a member of the military who knowingly committed treason. His, or her, gender status has nothing to do with his conviction for treason."

February 10, 2017: I quoted Trump (before his election) talking about Edward Snowden: "I think he's a total traitor and I would deal with him harshly," "And if I were president, Putin would give him over," and "Snowden is a spy who should be executed." I wondered: "But maybe you think Trump will end up looking good forefronting the iniquity of treason."

February 7, 2018: Trump had used the word "treasonous" to describe the Democrats who didn't applaud during his State of the Union Address. Yeah, it was a joke, but: "He's President and in the position of enforcing the law, and from that position punching down. He really should not be joking about treason. And I get that he's punching back, and that's his style. But people aren't just idiots if they feel afraid of a President who isn't continually assuring us that he's aware of his profound responsibilities."

April 17, 2018: I quoted Neil Gorsuch, concurring — and voting with the liberals ‚ in a case about immigration: "Vague laws invite arbitrary power. Before the Revolu­tion, the crime of treason in English law was so capa­ciously construed that the mere expression of disfavored opinions could invite transportation or death. The founders cited the crown’s abuse of 'pretended' crimes like this as one of their reasons for revolution. See Declaration of Independence ¶21."

May 4, 2018: A conservative commentator sarcastically said he was "waiting for the Left to scream treason" over John Kerry's "quiet play to save Iran deal with foreign leaders."

July 17, 2017: I quoted Byron York: "Would it have been appropriate for the Trump campaign to try to find the [Clinton] emails?... What if an intelligence operative from a friendly country got them and offered them? And what about an unfriendly country? Would there be a scale, from standard oppo research on one end to treason on the other, depending on how the emails were acquired?"

How to resolve the discrepancy of opinion over the Nunes memo.

I'm reading "Justice Dept. told court of source’s political influence in request to wiretap ex-Trump campaign aide, officials say" by Ellen Nakashima in The Washington Post:

The court that approved surveillance of a former campaign adviser to President Trump was aware that some of the information underpinning the warrant request was paid for by a political entity, although the application did not specifically name the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter....

The Justice Department made “ample disclosure of relevant, material facts” to the court that revealed “the research was being paid for by a political entity,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

“No thinking person who read any of these applications would come to any other conclusion but that” the work was being undertaken “at the behest of people with a partisan aim and that it was being done in opposition to Trump,” the official said....

So, it seems, the question is whether it was significantly deceptive to give the FISA court enough information to make it possible for the court to infer that the information came from people who were biased against Trump but to withhold the known and specific information that it was paid for by the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

Can we say that very clearly and ask fair-minded people if withholding the specific information and including only general information was the the way the Justice Department should interact with the FISA court?

Secondly, exactly how was this general information phrased? The unnamed official in the WaPo article says there was "ample disclosure" — but how much disclosure was there? WaPo is reporting that the application "did not specifically name the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign," which is to say that the application did not name the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. It did something else that's supposedly just as good or almost as good or not good enough at all.

I want to know exactly what the language was and how deceptive it may have been, and I'd like to see the opinion of some named experts who have been expressing themselves over a long period of time about the role of the FISA court. I don't want Trump-specific opinions. I want to hear from experts whose opinion of working with FISA extends back into the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, listen to Glenn Greenwald calling on his fellow lefties to remember their conscience:



IN THE COMMENTS: exhelodrvr1 said:

So is it normal to not give the FISA court the entire picture? If so, that would mean that the FISA court is aware of that, which is really scary.

Great question, because if the argument is what was done is fine because it's normal, we need to talk about the problem with FISA normal.

And it's an old exercise, and I hate to trot out clichés, but imagine if the Bush Justice Department had used the FISA court to get a warrant to surveil people on Barack Obama's presidential campaign by using evidence that came from someone paid by the RNC and the John McCain campaign and the application for the warrant had omitted naming the RNC and the John McCain campaign.

Bucket news.

1. "An 'improvised explosive device' was detonated on a Tube train in south-west London during Friday's rush hour, Scotland Yard has confirmed... Eighteeen people have been taken to hospital mostly with burn injuries.... Pictures show a white bucket on fire inside a supermarket bag, with wires trailing on to the carriage floor" (BBC).

2. "A Norfolk school that advised teachers to provide buckets for pupils to vomit in during lessons has backtracked, telling parents that 'genuinely unwell' children will receive proper treatment... The bucket guidance surfaced in a document given to teachers at the start of the year at Great Yarmouth Charter academy.... 'We all know children say things like that to get out of work. You never pretend to be ill to get out of work because we expect you to work through it. If you feel sick we will give you a bucket. If you vomit – no problem! You’ve got your bucket. That’s probably all your body wanted – to vomit. If you are really ill we will make sure you get all the attention you need,' the document said'" (The Guardian).

3. "If Roald Dahl had his way, his eponymous 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' hero would have been black, the author's widow revealed. Liccy Dahl said that when her husband first wrote the golden ticket-hunting character of Charlie Bucket in the 1960s, 'he wrote about a little black boy.' 'I don't know why (it was changed). It's a great pity,' Dahl told BBC Radio 4 Wednesday" (NY Daily News).

4. "Prince Harry watched on as school children got soaked during a visit to a conservation project that aims to teach youngsters to value the countryside.... An instructor threw a bucket of water over one shelter as children sat inside it to test whether it was waterproof, and there were shrieks and giggles from the children as water poured through a hole in the roof and drenched them. As children clambered out of the den Harry shook the instructor’s hand and said 'that’s cruel!' One of the children quipped 'we survived'" (Daily Mail).

5. "An ex-fugitive builder who held a complaining labourer in position as his compatriot colleague chopped his ear with a trowel was sued on Thursday.... 'I was working at the ground floor. The colleague was carrying a bucket full of cement from the upper floor. Some of the cement was falling from the bucket onto me. I begged him to carry the bucket with care and walk down slowly. He refused to listen to me. He went up and returned with the builder who immediately seized me. He hit my face with a trowel...'" (The Gulf Today).

6. "[Hillary] Clinton has little doubt that Assange was working with the Russians. 'I think he is part nihilist, part anarchist, part exhibitionist, part opportunist, who is either actually on the payroll of the Kremlin or in some way supporting their propaganda objectives, because of his resentment toward the United States, toward Europe,' she said. 'He’s like a lot of the voices that we’re hearing now, which are expressing appreciation for the macho authoritarianism of a Putin. And they claim to be acting in furtherance of transparency, except they never go after the Kremlin or people on that side of the political ledger.' She said she put Assange and Edward Snowden, who leaked extensive details of N.S.A. surveillance programs, 'in the same bucket—they both end up serving the strategic goals of Putin.' She said that, despite Snowden’s insistence that he remains an independent actor, it was 'no accident he ended up in Moscow'" (The New Yorker).

7."Two Nova Scotians have been charged criminally in unrelated horrific animal death cases — a man who allegedly drowned a litter of kittens in a bucket, and a woman who allegedly left a dog to die in an abandoned car.... 'It's what we refer to as breathlessness — so when an animal is drowned, it's basically the worst sensation you can ever come across is you know you're about to die,' [said Jo-Anne Landsburg, chief provincial inspector for the Nova Scotia SPCA]" (Guelph Today).

8. "How This Woman Retired at Age 32 — and Says You Can Too.... After graduating from the University of Chicago's law school, [Anita Dhake] decided she would work hard until she paid off her debt and saved enough to retire as soon as possible. She did the math, and that meant quitting once she had saved 25 years' worth of living expenses, which she would keep relatively low. She wouldn't have a fancy car or house, but would make up for it with the personal freedom and energy to check off her personal bucket list" (Popsugar).

"It sounds very strange when the head of the security services writes down a conversation with the commander-in-chief and then leaks it to the media through his friend."

"How, in that case, does he differ from [Edward] Snowden?... That means he is not the leader of the security services, but a human rights defender. And if he faces pressure, then we are happy to offer him political asylum too."

Said Vladimir Putin, in a long phone-in TV show he did today, taking questions from the Russian people. That's humor, by the way, in case it's not apparent to you.

"Why do millennials keep leaking government secrets?"

By Malcolm Harris — author of “Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials" — in WaPo.

Without intending to, employers and policymakers have engineered a cohort of workers that is bound to yield leakers. An important part of our training for the 21st-century labor market has been an emphasis on taking initiative, hustling, finding ways to be useful, not waiting around for someone in charge to tell us what to do....

Since we can’t get too attached to particular employers, millennials are encouraged by baby-boomer-run institutions to find internal motivation, to live out our values through our frequent employment choices, and we’ve heard them loud and clear....

Lots of firms try to look like they’re doing good in the world, in line with millennial values. Facebook isn’t an ad company; it connects the world! Uber isn’t a cab company; it liberates moms to make money in their off hours! But when firms act contrary to their rosy recruiting copy, workers who weren’t disposed to be loyal in the first place might find another way to live out their values...

We hardly invented leaking, but millennials are especially well-suited to the tactic. It’s a squirt gun we can use on our leaders when they’ve stepped out of line. I don’t imagine that employers — public or private — are going to start inspiring loyalty or stop abusing power anytime soon....

"There’s a confluence between the alt-right and the alt-left regarding Vladimir Putin and the..."

"... ratfucking (to use a venerable Watergate-era term) performed by Russian hackers, trolls, and bots. The Tyler Durden Fight Club alt-right idolizes Putin as a bare-chested manly man, as opposed to a metrosexual like Obama and an emasculating harpy like Hillary. This isn’t a beefcake fetish the alt-left shares. Instead, it invokes McCarthyism and the specter of a new Red Scare to characterize rising alarm over the Russian cyber-warfare as a rehash of Cold War bogeyman tales. In a widely noticed Facebook post, director Oliver Stone (whose most recent film was a soft-focus portrait of Edward Snowden) reminisced, 'I remember well in the 1950s when the Russians were supposed to be in our schools, Congress, State Department—and according to many Eisenhower/Nixon supporters—about to take over our country without serious opposition (and they call me paranoid!).' Stone ascribes the hysteria over the Russian hijacking of the democratic process to mainstream-media mau-mauing. 'As much as I may disagree with Donald Trump (and I do) he’s right now target number one of the MSM propaganda—until, that is, he jumps to the anti-Kremlin track because of some kind of false intelligence or misunderstanding cooked up by CIA. Then I fear, in his hot-headed way, he starts fighting with the Russians, and it wouldn’t be long then until a state of war against Russia is declared.'"

The Alt-House is trying to read James Wolcott's article "Why the Alt-Left Is a Problem, Too/Much of the media spotlight has been on the 'alt-right.' But the 'alt-left' provides a mirror image distortion: the same loathing of Clinton, rejection of 'identity politics,' and itch for a reckoning."

If Russia sends Edward Snowden back to American — a gift to Trump?! — it "would be a win-win."

"They've already extracted what they needed from Edward Snowden in terms of information and they've certainly used him to beat the United States over the head in terms of its surveillance and cyber activity. It would signal warmer relations and some desire for greater cooperation with the new administration, but it would also no doubt stoke controversies and cases in the U.S. around the role of surveillance, the role of the U.S. intelligence community, and the future of privacy and civil liberties in an American context. All of that would perhaps be music to the ears of Putin."

From an NBC article titled "Russia Considers Returning Snowden to U.S. to ‘Curry Favor’ With Trump: Official."

Remember, Trump has talked about Putin giving him this present:

"I think he's a total traitor and I would deal with him harshly," Trump said in July. "And if I were president, Putin would give him over." In October 2013, Trump tweeted: "Snowden is a spy who should be executed."

I can't believe it would help Trump to get the present he asked for from the disreputable Putin and to become embroiled in trying to put Snowden to death. Not everyone thinks he's a hero/whistleblower, but he's a young, idealistic man, and an effort to kill him will bring out the empathy in who knows how many people. But maybe you think Trump will end up looking good forefronting the iniquity of treason. And it will distract us from all the other things that have been distracting us from things that would otherwise be distracting us.

Snowden is right: You can't outsource bullshit detection.

I'm paraphrasing. He said:

“The problem of fake news isn’t solved by hoping for a referee but rather because we as participants, we as citizens, we as users of these services help each other. The answer to bad speech is not censorship. The answer to bad speech is more speech. We have to exercise and spread the idea that critical thinking matters now more than ever, given the fact that lies seem to be getting very popular.”

How Edward Snowden escaped.

"Summoned by his immigration lawyer in the late evening of June 10, 2013, Ajith (last names of the refugees in this story have been withheld), a former soldier in the Sri Lankan military, was told the unidentified man was 'famous' and needed 'protection.'"

“I was very happy to help him,” Ajith recalled during a recent interview with the National Post in his small windowless room in Kennedy Town, on the western tip of Hong Kong Island. “This famous person was a refugee too, same as me.”...

“Nobody would dream that a man of such high profile would be placed among the most reviled people in Hong Kong,” recalled Tibbo, a Canadian-born and educated barrister who has practiced law for 15 years. “We put him in a place where no one would look.”...

Snowden’s stay with Supun and Nadeeka was without incident. He ate mostly McDonald’s food and loved sweets, especially cake. His legal team limited their presence at the tiny apartment, but dispatched interns to deliver cakes and sweets embedded with USBs as a way to communicate with him.

Kennedy Town (named after Arthur Edward Kennedy, who was governor of Hong Kong in the 1870s)(photo from Wikipedia):

The word "sacrifice" is in issue this week, so let's look at 14 examples of the use of the word "sacrifice," mined from 186 posts with the tag "sacrifice" in the 12-year archive of this blog.

1. Back in November 2013, President Obama said this (in the context of staying in Washington until Sasha finishes high school):

"Cause she's, you know, obviously they-and Michelle-have made a lot of sacrifices on behalf of my cockamamie ideas, the running for office and things."

2. From a 2006 NYT article  about couples who choose not to live together:

Carolyne Roehm, the New York socialite and author, is similarly unwilling to sacrifice control of her space. Ms. Roehm, 54, said she is perfectly happy with her extreme version of the L.A.T. relationship, with Simon Pinniger, 53, a businessman who lives 1,700 miles away in Aspen, Colo. 

3. "Sacrifices have to be made," said a father who sold his motorcycle and got a minivan.

4. But another father put out a book in 2012 about the selfish reasons to have children:

Children cost far less than most parents pay, because parents overcharge themselves. You can have an independent life and still be an admirable parent. Before you decide against another child, then, you owe it to yourself to reconsider. If your sacrifice is only a fraction of what you originally thought, the kid might be a good deal after all.

5. The NYT reported something Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in the U.N. in September 2009:

“The engine of unbridled capitalism, with its unfair system of thought, has reached the end of the road and is unable to move... Selfishiness [sic] and insatiable greed have taken the place of such human concepts as love, sacrifice, dignity and justice. The belief in the one god has been replaced with self-belief.”

6. Here's Obama in April 2011:

"To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I’m president, we won’t.” 

7. An Orwellian banner hanging at the Wisconsin protests of 2011:

"All shared sacrifice is equal, but some must share the sacrifice more than others."

8. From a 2006 USA Today column:

"For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, [Al] Gore requires little from himself."

9. In 2012, Frank Bruni had a whole column in the NYT about the failure of the presidential candidates to use the word "sacrifice."

It’s odd. We revere the Americans who lived through World War II and call them the “greatest generation” precisely because of the sacrifices they made.... [T]he last president to make a truly robust call for sacrifice was ridiculed for it. That president, Jimmy Carter, suggested only that we turn down our thermostats a tad and guzzle a bit less gas, and in July 1979 observed, “Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.”

Then came Ronald Reagan, whose many great contributions to America were coupled with less great ones, including the idea, which has dominated our political discourse ever since, that we should speak only of morning in America and that optimism, like virtue, is its own reward....

Conditions, all in all, are ripe for a serious conversation about sacrifice. But this presidential campaign has been noteworthy for its nonsensical insinuations or assurances that although we’re in a jam, we can emerge from it with discrete, minimal inconvenience.... We live in a sacrifice-free bubble of volitional delusion.

Obama has lately taken to speaking of “economic patriotism,” which is in some sense his euphemism for sacrifice....

10. From a speech President G.W. Bush made in December 2005:

It is also important for every American to understand the consequences of pulling out of Iraq before our work is done. We would abandon our Iraqi friends and signal to the world that America cannot be trusted to keep its word. We would undermine the morale of our troops by betraying the cause for which they have sacrificed. We would cause the tyrants in the Middle East to laugh at our failed resolve, and tighten their repressive grip. We would hand Iraq over to enemies who have pledged to attack us and the global terrorist movement would be emboldened and more dangerous than ever before. To retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor, and I will not allow it.

11. From the Democratic candidates debate, April 27, 2007:

SEN. CLINTON: This is not America's war to win or lose. We have given the Iraqi people the chance to have freedom, to have their own country. It is up to them to decide whether or not they're going to take that chance. And it is past time for them to demonstrate that they are willing to make the sacrifice, the compromise that is necessary to put together a unified government and provide security and stability without our young men and women in the middle of their sectarian war....

12. In 2006, the NYT "public editor" said this when Supreme Court journalist Linda Greenhouse revealed some of her political opinions:

[J]ournalism [is] a calling ... that requires sacrifices and special obligations. Keeping personal opinions out of the public realm is simply one of the obligations for those who remain committed to the importance of impartial news coverage.

Which made me say:

Greenhouse's speech didn't seem that out of line to me, because I am so used to hearing law professors express all kinds of personal and political opinions about the Supreme Court, and, obviously, I do it all the time myself. I'm trying to imagine a law school where the professors felt they needed to make sacrifices and suppress and submerge their opinions. Actually, it's a scary place! Do you really want us to become more devious?

13. From a 2006 review of a book about how religion works:

[Daniel C.] Dennett, anticipating the outrage his comparison will make, suggests that this how religion works. People will sacrifice their interests, their health, their reason, their family, all in service to an idea "that has lodged in their brains." That idea, he argues, is like a virus or a worm, and it inspires bizarre forms of behavior in order to propagate itself. Islam, he points out, means "submission," and submission is what religious believers practice. In Mr. Dennett's view, they do so despite all evidence, and in thrall to biological and social forces they barely comprehend.

14. When we first encountered Edward Snowden in 2013, he spoke of himself in terms of "sacrifice":

He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."

"It’s still a capital crime, and I would give him the death sentence, and I would prefer to see him hanged by the neck until he’s dead, rather than merely electrocuted."

Said former former CIA director James Woolsey about Edward Snowden.

"I think the blood of a lot of these French young people is on his hands."

ADDED: Who appointed Woolsey? Bill Clinton. Oddly:

Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever have a one-on-one meeting with Clinton. Even semi-private meetings were rare. They only happened twice. Woolsey told me: "It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the president. It just didn't exist."

Woolsey once made this joke: "Remember the guy who in 1994 crashed his plane onto the White House lawn? That was me trying to get an appointment to see President Clinton."

"The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held in the case, which was brought by the ACLU, that the telephone metadata collection program 'exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized.'"

"The Court did not rule on a larger Constitutional issue and sent the case back down to a lower court for further proceedings."

A three judge panel held that the text of the Patriot Act "cannot bear the weight the government asks us to assign to it and that it does not authorize the telephone meta date program."

The Court said, "We do so comfortably in the full understanding that if Congress [chooses] to authorize such a far-reaching and unprecedented program, it has every [opportunity] to do so, unambiguously. Until such times as it does so, however, we decline to deviate from widely accepted interpretations of well-established legal standards."

"Snowden would be amenable to coming back to the United States for the kind of plea bargain that Gen. Petraeus received."

Said one of his legal advisers.