I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the Snowden matter. It's complicated because as I read different opinions online, I see very few folks who seem to be looking at the overall ethics and ramifications; just at immediate political gains. One fellow who wrote me seems to think that Snowden is a hero because what he revealed might harm Barack Obama. It would not have been okay with this guy for Snowden to do the exact same thing during the Bush administration…which he probably could have. One of the other things that makes it all murky is that so many people are easily reversing how they felt about the same tactics when it was "the other side" employing them.
My view — and this is not set in granite — is becoming a lot like the thoughts of Josh Marshall. I'm against government secrecy but I'm also against anyone who gets his hands on classified papers just deciding that he can overrule the little "Top Secret" stamp. I don't think one side of the argument has 100% of the moral high ground or the constitutional points. But I do think there's a legal/moral basis for some government secrecy and it can't be discounted just because some guy has a copier and an agenda.