Excerpt from The Weekly Standard
Written by The Scrapbook
A new movie on the subject from Oliver Stone and the imminent retirement of President Obama seem to have concentrated minds on the left: There is a burgeoning movement—confined, for the most part, to journalists—for Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, the fugitive national-security leaker now resident in Moscow.
Some of Snowden's public admirers are predictable: functionaries from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as the editor of the Nation. None of these is surprising: The Scrapbook cannot remember the last time the ACLU might have recognized that there is something called the national interest; and the Nation has long had a weakness for Americans living in the protective shadow of the Kremlin. Their romantic view of Edward Snowden is no doubt matched by Oliver Stone, the cinematic conspiracy theorist.