Please Join Ron Paul's Petition Demanding Clemency for Edward Snowden by Signing It

Libertarian stalwart and former Texas congressman Ron Paul has launched a petition demanding clemency for Edward Snowden before his Russian visa expires in July, persuasively arguing that “Thanks to one man's courageous actions, Americans know about the truly egregious ways their government is spying on them.”

Ron Paul's Petition site says, "Edward Snowden shocked the world when he exposed the NSA’s illegal and abusive spying program. Instead of applauding him for his bravery and patriotism, the U.S. government labels Snowden a traitor."

.IMO, the ”good message, flawed messenger" meme often trumpeted on apparently 'progressive' media outlets whenever they run a story about Ron or Rand Paul is simply wrongheaded if for no other reason than the fact that we're all 'flawed messengers'. But it's also mis-guided in that it attempts to assert a type of purity filter on diverse issues. IMO we must support folks on the issues where we agree with them. This is especially true of the Pauls who have for years been the nearly the only outspoken critics of the military industrial complex, on an anti-Empire foreign policy, on drug legalization, on the Fed and the ridicularity of fiat currency.

Rand Paul has led the fight by filibustering against drones in the US Senate, much to the embarrassment of both Democrats and Republicans [the duopoly]. Further just a few days ago Rand launched a lawsuit against the NSA's illegal intrusion into what is supposed to be our privacy. Rand says, “We think it may well be the largest class-action lawsuit ever filed on the behalf of the Bill of Rights." Rand compared, as he has many times before, the bulk collection of telephone metadata as precisely the kind of general warrant Britain subjected American colonists to in the lead up the the revolution.

i'm not a member of any political party anywhere and there many issues on which i totally disagree with Ron and Rand Paul. IMO, the Pauls should apply the same libertarian philosophy to all the issues that they do to 4th Amendment Rights. That said, The Mud Report stands with the Pauls on the issue of our right to privacy.

If Rand [or Ron before him], were to have an epiphany and see that abortion is a private, personal, decision that is outside the purview of government, that homosexuality is too, that a real libertarian philosophy encompasses the fact that every individual has the right to clean air, water and soil and that corporations aren't real people therefore have no right to poison the water, air and soil of real people, he could be elected President in 2016.