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That's exactly how it works. The law does not exist in isolation as an axiomatic rule. The intent and circumstances of an action are all taken into account. Legalism is tyranny, plain and simple.

Also, you are allowed to say "Yeah, he broke the law, but we don't give a fuck." It's called jury nullification.

As soon as you excuse the law because it doesn't "feel" right, you walk a shaky path to anarchy.

The United States hasn't been walking to the path of anarchy, but quite the opposite. We actually need more anarchy.

Yes, but jury nullification will only happen once there is a trial. He must be prosecuted under the law he broke and found innocent.

Convince Snowden that he will get a fair trial and see if he'll return and face it.

I think you'll have quite a task convincing anyone though that Snowden would get a fair trial. If you can't guarantee a fair trial, then you can't expect people to submit to one.

The point is the GP's highly simplistic conception of law and the judicial system does not pan out in practice. Also the "shaky path to anarchy" is such a pathetic jab that one is strongly tempted to yell astroturfer.

Maybe it seems simplistic, but frankly that is how the world goes round. A person breaks a law and is held accountable. The article suggests Governor Chafee's reaction that, despite the breaking of a major law, Snowden should just come home free, unconditionally, is somehow the correct approach. That, to me, seems both overly simplistic and unrealistic. Clinton properly acknowledges that a law was broken and you can't just casually dismiss that. That seems much more responsible to me. Now, if a president were to later pardon Snowden, that is also allowable by law.

It seems you revolve around the idea of law being a divine ordinance. That's fine, but also a fringe view. Laws have relevance insofar as the ones subject to it have a consensus, and if there is sufficient interest in the law being enforced. In addition, laws often are dismissed or punitive actions significantly diminished depending on intent, circumstances (political, social or on a case-by-case basis) and perceived justice, the ultimate expression of the latter being nullification which in the U.S. has a notable history. As such, the trite legalism that suggests "the law is the law" as if commanded by a deity and that it must unequivocally be applied to its maximal extent, is the irresponsible and simplistic view.

Is your fnord the same user as the other fnord? In any case, feel free to provide further insight here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10405154

I'm not the same commentator as fnordfnordfnord. As for your linked question, it's heavily verging on RTFM territory, so I'll let you do that.

It is simplistic. People break laws all the time and aren't held accountable. Cases in point, the many people involved in illegal spying, torture, banking fraud, etc. Your post simply does not reconcile with reality.

"Now, if a president were to later pardon Snowden, that is also allowable by law."

If the President were today to pardon Snowden, that is also allowable by law.

> Also, you are allowed to say "Yeah, he broke the law, but we don't give a fuck." It's called jury nullification.

More importantly here in particular, it's called a presidential pardon.

>I don't think you can say that someone broke real laws and then excuse it because public opinion or a subjective idea of public "service" somehow trumped the laws.

What, so hiding Anne Frank couldn't be excused?

The espionage act is bullshit and needs to be changed. It's pretty clear that he wasn't spying and what he did shouldn't have been covered by the act.

Your entire comment is founded upon the assumption that the law is the arbiter of right and wrong, and that because it exists, it should be followed - it is not, and we shouldn't. Here's what Jefferson had to say about the law: "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

For over 100 years there were laws in the South that made it illegal to racially integrate businesses and public places. It was the government that kept this horrible practice alive; a free market would never have tolerated such inorganic demand suppression (as evidenced by the state of the North).

Most people are so trusting of statism and its hamster wheel that they never take the time to actually contemplate what most "laws" really are: subjective shit a group of people decided to write on dead trees and direct squads of soldiers to force on you under the threat of violence.

The highest law of the land grants the President (for which these people are candidates) the power to pardon people for the breaking of other laws and face reduced or no punishment. That's evidence even enshrined in our own law that there are times that simply applying the consequences of laws can be unjust.

> You cannot say "yeah, he broke the law, but...." because then, what is the value of law?

I can and will say that, and then I will say that the value of the laws in question is low (negative, really). You seem to be painting this as a contradiction, as if disliking one particular law implies disliking the fundamental concept of laws. There is no such contradiction.

In fact, Martin Luther King argued that it's our responsibility to disobey an unjust law.

> You cannot say "yeah, he broke the law, but...." because then, what is the value of law? It is possible to agree with Snowden's actions while still accepting that he broke laws.

What if the laws are wrong to begin with? Slavery and segregation were both at one point in time laws but I would never say the people who enforced them were right simply because it was a law.

Of course you can argue that other relevant factors should balance out and partially or fully reduce the consequences of breaking a law. This negotiation happens every day in courtrooms throughout the country. If what you said was true, we wouldn't need judges, lawyers, or juries. The judicial system would only consist of fact finders and a robotic judge that looked up penalties in a big dictionary.

The law isn't simply a if() statement.

Let us all remind ourselves that Clinton is under investigation by the FBI for her email server handling and they recovered classified documents from it

> I don't think you can say that someone broke real laws and then excuse it because public opinion or a subjective idea of public "service" somehow trumped the laws. The U.S. is a nation of laws. If something doesn't work as expected, laws are changed.

The usual process is the adversarial legal system in the US, which does allow a fair amount of leeway for changing laws. I think there are a class of bad laws that people think are very difficult to change by this head-on method, however.

In response to the commenters, we're talking about the Espionage Act, not jaywalking. What message does it send to excuse someone from breaking this law? It's a very important law, do we want anyone exposing national secrets? Giving him a pass on this particular law sets a dangerous precedent. I support what Snowden revealed, but why didn't he go about it legally? Can anyone provide a good reason why he didn't follow whistleblower laws?

"What message does it send to excuse someone from breaking this law?"

It sends a message that if, in good conscience, you believe that what we're secretly doing is wrong enough that you need to reveal it to the American people, you can do so without facing inordinate punishment.

This is the best possible message we can send! If we are going to have secret programs doing this kind of stuff, this is an important check that we're not being horrendously evil in the world.

Remember that we're not polling a random collection of people, but people who have chosen to work on this kind of thing, whose paycheck relies on accepting it, who are regularly thinking about how to make it do more good and less bad and want to believe they're being somewhat competent at that, and people who have already been extensively vetted for security access. If one of those people are sufficiently concerned to raise this kind of alarm, it needs to be raised.

But somebody in good conscience could use our existing whistleblower laws to expose it right. Deliberately breaking a major law on national security isn't a risk we should recommend anyone to take.

> Clinton said that Edward Snowden could have gotten all the protections of being a whistleblower." A key 1998 law focused on intelligence community workers does lay out a pathway Snowden could have followed. However, there is at least a significant legal debate over whether the issues Snowden wanted to raise would fall under that law.

> Additionally, legal experts including an Army inspector general have said that the 1998 law does not protect whistleblowers from reprisals.

> The protections that Clinton referenced do not seem to be as strong as she suggested, and most of the expert opinion suggests they would not apply to Snowden.

> We rate this claim Mostly False.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/...

If you read the article, you would know that he wasn't protected under existing whistlyblower laws, and in fact makes reference to three others who specifically were unduly reprised, punished and proscecuted...

The Espionage Act, an absurd broadly worded thing that's been used how many times? Contrast that with how many people have recently "leaked" classified info but in contrast with Snowden, those leaks served the interests of some faction in the government. Why haven't there been dozens of others charged under this law?

The Act has been used in Wikileaks cases also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning

You think the president should only pardon jaywalkers? What kind of message does that send?

One of our laws, in this nation of laws, allows the President to issue pardons - even when "someone broke real laws."

If you are running for president and think that you can excuse the Espionage Act then you are exactly right because Article II of the Constitution grants you explicit legal authority to do so.