Oh (S)NO(WDEN)!

Have you been hearing the "back channel" murmurings for the repatriation of Edward Snowden? In typical US political rhetorical style, Obama softens his hard line, but still talks tough, while he instructs his proxies like Holder to go out and say things that seem conciliatory, but nowhere actually rule out the possibility of clemency or immunity?

Snowden, who has shown himself to be in no way a bullshitter, sensing what's going on, issues a statement that says, "me coming home would be the ideal resolution, but it's never going to happen without clemency. The laws that they are invoking have no provision for a 'public good' defense. With the ineffective law we have in place I could have been charged with a felony if I had only released this information to Congress."

I've thought for a long time that the US has been stupid to not do absolutely anything necessary to get this guy home again--including clemency and maybe some jet skiis or something. But now my fear is that this is EXACTLY what's going to happen.

And it will have to include iron-clad legal promises rendering Snowden immune from prosecution from almost ANY crime, otherwise, they'll throw him in Gitmo for "jaywalking in a terrorist fashion".

And I believe that the administration will finally wise up enough to make this possible. And while it might be nice for Ed to be home for Xmas, it will complete shit for everyone else without a political dog in the fight. Because new stuff keeps coming out. Just today I read that he released info indicating that the NSA is working on compromising smartphone apps.

One deal he is NEVER going to get is to come home and continue to be able to bring these things to light. So the minute he makes a deal, the rest of the secrets he controls, including ones that might be very important for us to know, will be locked away forever. That will be a condition for any deal, Holder has said as much, and he even said, "and I am talking about getting more than Snowden's word for it."

It's anybody's guess what that might be, or if such a thing is even possible at this point, because Snowden is surely smart enough to have "fail safe" options set up to many degrees of redundancy, otherwise, he'd be dead already.

I'm sorry, Edward. We appreciate all you've done, but you, of all people, can never come home again.