An excerpt:

Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I don't agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago.

After the New York Times had been enjoined from publishing the Pentagon Papers -- on June 15, 1971, the first prior restraint on a newspaper in U.S. history -- and I had given another copy to The Post (which would also be enjoined), I went underground with my wife, Patricia, for 13 days. My purpose (quite like Snowden's in flying to Hong Kong) was to elude surveillance while I was arranging -- with the crucial help of a number of others, still unknown to the FBI -- to distribute the Pentagon Papers sequentially to 17 other newspapers, in the face of two more injunctions. The last three days of that period was in defiance of an arrest order: I was, like Snowden now, a "fugitive from justice."

Yet when I surrendered to arrest in Boston, having given out my last copies of the papers the night before, I was released on personal recognizance bond the same day. Later, when my charges were increased from the original three counts to 12, carrying a possible 115-year sentence, my bond was increased to $50,000. But for the whole two years I was under indictment, I was free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures. I was, after all, part of a movement against an ongoing war. Helping to end that war was my preeminent concern. I couldn't have done that abroad, and leaving the country never entered my mind.

There is no chance that experience could be reproduced today, let alone that a trial could be terminated by the revelation of White House actions against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon's era -- and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment -- but are today all regarded as legal (including an attempt to "incapacitate me totally").

Glenn:

I encourage everyone to read Ellsberg's entire argument, as few people have greater authority than he to speak about courageous whistleblowing. Relatedly, NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen and Charles Pierce have both written about what they call "the Snowden effect": the tidal wave of revelations about US surveillance policy stemming not only from the documents he enabled us to report, but also the resulting unprecedented focus on the Surveillance State. Writes Pierce: "Whether he likes it or not, this is the 'national conversation' that the president said he wanted. Edward Snowden, world traveler, international man of luggage, made it impossible to avoid."

Also, there is a new video up (7 minutes) with more of the Snowden interview, here.

I'm in my ninth week without cigs and chewing a lot of nicotine gum.  I started with patches thru my health insurance, which included a class that helped.  

I'm still addicted to nicotine, obviously.  I'm a recovering alcoholic with 30 years sober.  A list of addictive substances puts cigs at number three, and booze at number six.  Everyone in my AA meetings say quitting cigs is much harder than quitting alcohol.

If taking a Gulfstream from Moscow to Caracas, today is not the day to fly as Tropical Storm Chantal is off the Venezuelan coast.

With the supposed deadline for accepting the Venezuelan offer having passed but no mention at all of what's happening, Caracas could still be the place with just the logistics being worked out.

If Venezuela is the final destination, he'll likely be sitting another day or two in Moscow. A Gulfstream that has to change its course due to a storm would have fuel issues and possibly land Snowden somewhere he'd prefer not to be.

I've changed my three final resting spots. Bolivia is out. It's just not possible to fly there from Moscow. It's now in order of possibilities: 1) Venezuela; 2) Nicaragua; and 3) (the dark horse) Iceland.

Late last week, NYC mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio issued a scorching letter to interim chancellor Kelly in which he demanded that CUNY renegotiate the deal.

General Petraeus' salary of $150,000 could sponsor full tuition for 26 students. Similarly, $150,000 could fund needed books and supplies, estimated at $1,248 per year per student, for 120 students.
...
To spend $150,000 for an instructor who will teach just one class once per week that will reach just 15-20 students seems to be a misallocation of vital educational resources.

I urge you renegotiate this salary with General Petraeus to a rate that matches other professors in similar teaching arrangements, and direct the remainder of the money into tuition and resources that will better serve CUNY students.

Sources tell me that pressure is already growing on the other mayoral candidates to do the same. New York City councilman Brad Lander has initiated a petition drive urging CUNY to rescind its boondoggle offer. link

"The rationale that we have no privacy interest in our metadata because we share it with phone or Internet companies to route our communications was always a fiction."

The government now has the technology to collect, store, and analyze information about our communications cheaply and quickly. It can assemble a picture of everyone we call or email--essentially our entire personal and professional lives--with a few computer commands. In addition, given the pervasive presence of geo-locators on our smart phones, the government is able to electronically monitor and reconstruct virtually every place we visit--a capacity that will only increase with the growing practice of photographing our license plates and the rapid improvement of facial-recognition software in combination with proliferating video cameras.
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The government's new and intrusive capacities should prompt a rethinking of the law. The rationale that we have no privacy interest in our metadata because we share it with phone or Internet companies to route our communications was always a fiction. After all, this routing information is in the same stream of electrical data that includes the contents of our communications. Both are shared with phone and Internet companies by necessity, but for a purpose: to enable our communications in the modern era, not to share them with anyone but their intended recipients. These companies should not be understood as random third parties to whom in choosing to expose our electronic activity we can be said to forego legitimate expectations of privacy. Instead, they should be viewed as custodians of today's dominant forms of communication with a duty to protect their confidentiality. Only if the government has been able to demonstrate extraordinary circumstances--generally, by obtaining a targeted court order reflecting probable cause to believe that the communications in question contain evidence of criminal activity to which access is needed--should this confidentiality be broken.

Coleen Rowley has some questions she'd like him to be asked:

1. Will you maintain the F.B.I. ban on torture and coercing of statements and confessions? Would you instruct F.B.I. agents to investigate all credible reports, including those involving other federal personnel, of violations of Sections 2340 and 2441 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which define torture and war crimes? (In 2002, according to a Justice Department report, F.B.I. agents at Guantánamo Bay created a "war crimes file" to document accusations of prisoner mistreatment by American military personnel, but an F.B.I. official ordered that the file be closed in 2003.)

2. In March 2004, you argued that the N.S.A. surveillance program was illegal. Do you still believe that the domestic communications of American citizens can be legally monitored by the government only with a judicially approved warrant? If so, what assurances about the warrantless surveillance scheme did Mr. Bush offer that persuaded you to stop opposing the program?

3. Do you stand by your statement, made at a Justice Department news conference in June 2004, that it was right to hold Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was arrested on American soil, in a military brig (for two years at that point) without charges?

4. Why, in April 2005, did you approve 13 harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding and up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation, for use on suspects by officers of the C.I.A.?

5. Do you stand by a speech in March 2009 in which you spoke of the need to "incapacitate" terrorists who could not be prosecuted, either because of a lack of sufficient evidence or because the information had been secretly provided by a foreign country? Do you believe that since procedures exist for "preventative detention" of people with dangerous mental illness, there should be a similar way to detain terrorism suspects without trial?

6. Do you believe there is a trade-off between civil liberties and national security, or do you think, as Mr. Obama stated when he ran for president, that this is a false choice? Where do you believe the balance between privacy and safety can be found, when the government has ready access to vast amounts of data collected by communications companies?

7. The N.S.A.'s data-mining operations seem to be sweeping up information involving foreigners and American citizens alike. How can we preserve the distinction between "non-U.S. persons" abroad, on whom officials have virtually unlimited authority to conduct surveillance, and "U.S. persons" inside our borders, on whom they lack authority to conduct warrantless surveillance?

8. Can you explain why the F.B.I. has submitted requests to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for phone call data, even though the data is to be directly furnished to the N.S.A.? How does the F.B.I. follow up on such requests to ensure that the N.S.A. is protecting the rights of American citizens?

9. Are the N.S.A.'s data-gathering efforts, disclosed in recent weeks, an outgrowth of Mr. Bush's earlier warrantless surveillance program, to which you objected? Do they relate to the "Total Information Awareness" scheme proposed by John M. Poindexter, a retired admiral and former aide to Ronald Reagan, that was terminated after it was made public in 2002?

10. Do you believe that the F.B.I., in investigating a leak of classified information, was right in 2010 to call James Rosen, a Fox News reporter, a potential "co-conspirator"?

11. Officials say that great national harm will result from the disclosure of secret activities that are legally questionable. What do you think of this proposed remedy: The government should abide by international law and refrain from infringing on the rights of American citizens in the first place?

New Indiana Law:

The new law also makes it a Class B Misdemeanor for a clergyman, judge, mayor, city clerk or town clerk-treasurer to perform a same-sex marriage, punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.  Any clerk who issues a license to a same-sex couple would also be guilty of a Class B Misdemeanor.

Wait a minute. The government -- excuse me, THE GOVERNMENT! --can tell a member of the clergy the people for whom that member of the clergy can and cannot perform a wedding? link  

At the time, State Election Commission director Marci Andino said the agency had investigated a handful of cases where it appeared the names of deceased people had appeared on polling precinct signature rolls, but found nothing nefarious.

She explained that of the initial batch of six names of allegedly dead voters on the DMV's list, one had cast an absentee ballot before dying; another was the result of a poll worker mistakenly marking the voter as his deceased father; two were clerical errors resulting from stray marks on voter registration lists detected by a scanner; and two others resulted from poll managers incorrectly marking the name of the voter in question instead of the voter above or below on the list.

The agency went on to investigate more than 200 other names on the dead voter list and found zero cases of illegal activity.

A federal judge ruled today that a long-standing lawsuit alleging illegal surveillance by the National Security Agency may continue despite the Obama administration's objections.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in San Francisco rejected the administration's claim that the lawsuit could not proceed because it might reveal "state secrets" and endanger national security.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed the lawsuit, called Jewel v. NSA, in 2008 to challenge a NSA's warrantless surveillance program that vacuumed up Americans' confidential electronic communications. It alleges (PDF) that the NSA "intentionally and willfully caused" or directed AT&T to permit access to its fiber links in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the U.S. Constitution.

"One small step for the case, one giant leap for the Constitutional rights of mankind," EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl wrote on Twitter this afternoon.

Well, some might be interested to note that nearly 36 years later, Voyager 1 is STILL transmitting data back to earth from the far reaches of the solar system, beyond Pluto and on the cusp of interstellar space. What a long strange trip it's been.

One thing is certain, if the US government was willing to risk the life of the Bolivian president by aborting his flight plan as his plane was in midair and running low on fuel, it is obviously prepared to murder Snowden himself to stop his disclosures. ...

It cannot be left in the hands of the bourgeois nationalist governments in Latin America, which seek their own means of accommodating US imperialism and furthering the interests of their own ruling classes, nor in those of Vladimir Putin's corrupt regime of the Russian oligarchy in Moscow.

The working class in the US and every other country constitutes the only genuine constituency for the defense of democratic rights. It alone can mount a viable opposition to the police-state measures that are embraced by wealthy ruling layers in the US and around the world to defend a system characterized by vast social inequality, economic exploitation and political oppression.

Mass support must be mobilized in workplaces, schools and neighborhoods in the US and around the world around the demand of "Hands off Edward Snowden!" His defense must be coupled with that of Private Bradley Mannning and Julian Assange, who are like him facing state persecution for exposing the crimes of US imperialism, and turned into the spearhead for a struggle in defense of democratic rights and against the capitalist profit system that gives rise to war and the threat of dictatorship.

A proposal in Congress touted as increasing oversight of the National Security Agency could instead derail legal challenges to the U.S. government's warrantless demands for confidential customer data.

Legislation introduced last month by Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, alters the ground rules that currently permit U.S. companies to object to a secretive intelligence-gathering technique, called a national security letter, used by the federal government to obtain both individual and bulk customer records.

Part of Leahy's proposal prevents companies from directly challenging the legality of NSL requests in their local courts, meaning they need to rely on the Justice Department to initiate litigation in a jurisdiction of its own choosing -- a dramatic change that raises the cost of a legal challenge and reduces the odds of it succeeding.

"Leahy's bill seems to remove the ability of recipients to initiate their own challenges to an NSL gag order," said Matt Zimmerman, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is litigating an NSL case in San Francisco. If the measure becomes law, Zimmerman said, EFF might not have been able to file its lawsuit in the northern district of California, and the Justice Department "most certainly would not have either."

More at CNET July 09: NSA Senate oversight bill may handcuff U.S. companies

Major League Baseball is expected to suspend as many as 20 players including Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez sometime after next week's All-Star break, according to "Outside the Lines."