[slg]

Snowden and Clinton are apples and oranges. There is a reason why we don't have the same punishments for if someone is at fault in a car accident that kills someone versus if they purchase a gun and immediately use it to kill someone.

[dredmorbius]

While there's a point buried in there, it's poorly made and analogised.

You've got two people taking deliberate actions which could expose or at least violate handling rules for classified information. One was seeking to retain it personally persuant to her job, the other was exposing it to the world, under the guidance of his conscience and loyalty to his Constitution.

Both broke rules.

How they did so, to what ends, and to what effect are hugely different.

Drawing comparisons between Snowden and Clinton as GP did is far too muddled to really be useful, IMO.

(Disclaimers: I think Snowden should be a national hero to Americans, and is a global hero. Clinton rather grudgingly gets my nod to occupy the Oval Office, though given current contenders, that's very much a lesser evil option, with an enormous gulf between her and the greater evil not tempering the fact that she's damaged goods and quite probably not the leadership the US needs at present. She seems to be what they'll get. I rather hope that she does, actually. Trump would be a disaster for the planet, and any plausible GOP alternate would be nearly as bad. Not that the GOP have been constrained by plausibility of late.)

[morganvachon]

Are you seriously comparing his actions to first degree murder? I think you're a bit biased here.

[umanwizard]

It's an analogy, not a comparison. Do you seriously not understand the difference?

[morganvachon]

I understand the difference, just as I understand that it's a sneaky way to perform an ad hominem attack. You could have chosen any two contrasting actions, but you specifically chose violent murder as an analogy to what he did. Perhaps you did it subconsciously, but, well...there it is.