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National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has found the court of public opinion to be far more receptive than a court of law. He conducts the occasional interview with seemingly sympathetic journalists. NBC News aired one such interview with anchorman Brian Williams on Wednesday night. "Do you see yourself as a patriot?" Williams asked. "I do," answered Snowden, now 30. He was just trying to protect the country and the Constitution "from the encroachment of adversaries -- and those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries." Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, was having none of it. "In...

Imagine you were in the position of Snowden. As a contractor to the National Security Agency, you knew that your government was monitoring what seemed to be an indefensible amount of electronic communication, from emails, to phone calls, between ordinary Americans. What would you do? Perhaps you would: Resign in protest? Go to the Press with declassified information? Point the Press in the right direction, to ask the right questions? Go public? Other whistleblowers in modern American history, such as Daniel Ellsberg, are today hailed as heroes. Help to start a national conversation about fundamental privacy rights, and the Constitutional...

If there is a country Saudi Arabia and Iran despise more than Israel, it’s each other. When it comes to Syria, Iran’s most prominent ally, the prospect of removing Bashar al-Assad has a pavlovian effect on the Saudis. ... Putin beat Barack Obama and John Kerry like a couple of drums. While Obama saw an opportunity to spin a resounding defeat into an opportunity to back down under the guise of a diplomatic stalemate as the preferred option, there were consequences. One of those consequences involves Saudi Arabia’s anger with the U.S. for not dealing with Assad. Consequences aren’t necessarily...

In the short time as a Republican, Emmanuel "Manny" Roman has made more than a few enemies at the Miami-Dade Republican Party. And now that Roman is running for vice-president of the county party, he's feeling the backlash....

Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter SH: So are you saying that, for PR purposes, that they should give in to Obama on the tax rate? AC: Not exactly, I--Well, yeah, I guess I am. SH: You're saying capitulate to Obama? We don't have a revenue problem, Ann. AC: We lost the election, Sean. Hannity seems genuinely flummoxed by Coulter's capitulatory attitude, but does she have a point? Recent polling has been gruesome for Republicans. Not only does an overall double-digit plurality favor raising taxes on "the rich," support for extending all current tax rates has plummeted by nearly 30 percentage...

The central figures in the David Petraeus sex scandal are not talking. That includes Virginia Congressman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Yet, the decision by this top Republican to turn to the FBI rather than his colleagues in the House with inside information about the scandal has proven to be monumental, a development that enabled Barack Obama to win the presidency without getting tainted by the allegations of immorality and corruption that are now the subject of daily news reports. Eric_Cantor_official_portrait_112th_CongressThe record shows that Cantor had knowledge of the affair from an FBI whistleblower before the election but decided...

As any poker player knows, those 8 percent chances do come up once in a while. If it happens this year, then a lot of polling firms will have to re-examine their assumptions — and we will have to re-examine ours about how trustworthy the polls are. But the odds are that Mr. Obama will win another term.

If MOTUS had a mole in the Department of Justice, he wouldn’t look like one of Big Guy’s sons, butt he might look like this: If you don’t remember how Little Mo came to live with us in the Big White, following is a brief retrospective of his career. Little Mo’s first public appearance: Moles, Polls and Controlled Fat Rolls: Mole runs past Big Guy in the Rose Garden while he’s yammering about the Wall Street mess. ...Well, I mention all of that “on background” only so you realize how inherently qualified Little Mo is for his new and so...

Exclusive: Arrested spy compromised China's U.S. espionage network: sources (Reuters) - A Chinese state-security official arrested this year on allegations of spying for Washington is suspected to have compromised some of China's U.S. agents in a major setback that angered President Hu Jintao, sources said. Hu personally intervened this year, ordering an investigation into the case after the Ministry of State Security arrested one of its own officials for passing information to the Americans, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said. The official, an aide to a vice minister, was taken into custody sometime between January and March...

With the help of a mole, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has turned the tables on Attorney General Eric Holder. Issa has long been exasperated with Holder, claiming that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been withholding information on a controversial gun-running operation. But through an anonymous source, Issa has obtained information about the initiative that is under a federal court-ordered seal. Giving such information out is a federal crime, raising the question of whether the Justice Department will seek to prosecute what Republicans are calling a whistleblower.

“Fox News mole” Joe Muto tweeted this morning that he was issued a search warrant today, and that his iPhone, laptop, and old notebooks were confiscated by law enforcement. Muto added that he was being charged with “grand larceny, among other things.” The Muto story has to be one of the biggest liberal media fails in recent memory. Gawker paid Muto $5,000 for his scoops on Fox News – and Muto promptly revealed that Mitt Romney likes horses. Fox News CEO Roger Ailes brought the hammer down on Muto immediately... As it turns out, Ailes was quite serious about Muto’s...

The Fox News employee hired by Gawker to write about his experience inside the network has revealed himself as an associate producer on “The O’Reilly Factor.” Joe Muto, who joined Fox News in 2004, says he has been suspended, with pay and was escorted out of Fox News headquarters today by “two nice gentlemen from security.”

Iran's Intelligence Ministry has claimed it infiltrated the Iranian opposition outside the country and prevented a plan to create what has been described as a "government in exile" supported and promoted by Iran's enemies. The claim was made first in a documentary titled "A Diamond For Deceit," aired on state television on June 8. The Iranian agent who had the lead role in the show was introduced as Mohammad Reza Madhi. Madhi is said to be a former member of Iran’s security organs who was involved in the trade of precious stones in Thailand before infiltrating the opposition. Mahdi introduced...

The surprise generated by the throwing of Donald Trump's hat into the ring of 2012 presidential hopefuls is in part based upon his relative wealth, and professional and social status. He certainly needs no political clout to better command any situation he chooses, so that can't be his motivation. In part it is based upon his own unchallenged political history, having donated to both Republicans and Democrats over the years. While his donations number fairly evenly between the two, he has been more generous with Democrats, who also seem better to mirror his personal lifestyle. The heads that are scratched...

New information has been uncovered by investigators delving into the looming White House/Department of Justice/Chicago political mob scandal. My latest video, posted in the left column, provides the details. Several items are worth noting. First, the New Black Panther voter intimidation case at the Department of Justice is only the tip of the iceberg. There is good reason and evidence to suspect that the Democratic Party has engaged in nationwide voter fraud and election tampering on a scale never before seen in American politics. The players allegedly involved are named in the video. Second, a separate scandal is developing regarding...

Does Sarah Palin have a George Soros mole in her inner circle? The answer may very well be "yes" according to federal disclosure forms unearthed just a short time ago. A Republican lobbyist by the name of Randy Scheunemann operates a consulting firm in the Washington, D.C., area called Orion Strategies. Scheunemann has been with Palin ever since she was picked by John McCain to be his running mate for the 2008 presidential election campaign. Currently, Scheunemann is Palin’s foreign policy advisor and one of her top aides. Since 2008, Scheunemann’s influence in the Palin camp has only grown larger;...

Most of us are taught to believe that religion is a good thing, that family matters, that one must respect tradition, that the laws of heaven supercede those of men — and you know what, you wouldn’t get a single word of argument from Osama bin Laden himself. But the law of nature’s god, or rather perhaps of God’s nature, are such that if you don’t look deeper than that, you lose, and you lose big-time.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Officials in the Obama White House are considering the possibility that the Christmas day attempt by Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Mutallab to blow up an airliner about to land in Detroit was deliberately and intentionally facilitated by unnamed networks inside the US intelligence community. This was the gist of a report by Richard Wolf delivered in this evening's edition of cable network MSNBC's Countdown program, hosted by Keith Olbermann. This report comes on the eve of a special White House interagency conference convoked by Obama to deal with the massive systemic failure of US intelligence in allowing...

The United States should find a way to collaborate with Russia in establishment of missile defenses, U.S. President Barack Obama said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 29). "It is important for us to reach out to Russia and explore ways in which the missile defense configurations that we envision could potentially lead to further collaboration," Obama said after meeting with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. "We want to improve generally not only U.S.-Russian relations, but also NATO-Russian relations, while making absolutely clear that our commitments to all of our allies in NATO is sacrosanct," the president added, according to Agence...

Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal. Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.