Putin: Nyet, We're Not Extraditing Snowden

I'm not sure why Obama would publicly make a demand he should have known would be refused.

Although my sneaking suspicion is that Obama doesn't want Snowden extradited. The politics of an arrest and prosecution would be too dicey, given his spying on AP and James Rosen.

And yet he's supposed to prosecute Snowden. So maybe he's making public demands for Snowden in hopes they'd be refused.

This occurred to me when Alan Derschowitz suggested that Snowden shouldn't be charged with anything more than simple theft, in order to reduce the justification for a foreign country to refuse extradition. He specifically did not think Snowden should be charged with espionage or treason -- not if we actually wanted our request entertained.* But late Friday night, the news was leaked Snowden was being charged with treason.

Maybe I'm giving him too much credit. Maybe he's just not very good at presidentin'.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is in the transit zone of a Moscow airport and will not be extradited to the United States.

Putin said that Snowden hasn't crossed the Russian border and is free to go anywhere.

* By the way, I don't understand how Derschowitz' gabit was imagined to be useful. It's not like the Chinese or Russians wouldn't have realized the real charge underlying the stated one.

posted by Ace at 11:54 AM

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