Well, you must be a full blooded American, because you are phenomenally stupid.

If no law enforcement body is compelled to prosecute a violator for convictable abrogations of law, then a directed verdict for "guilty" cannot be illegal (except in your delusional imagination). You've been watching too many pre-1960's movies. Hint, what HUAC and the FBI did wasn't legal either, in the American legal context. I didn't see either Joe McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover go to prison either.

A politician's honesty has nothing to do with it. Its a lawyer's honesty. Its much like dealing with Lucifer, but they are scrupulously honest where enforceable legal stipulations make them so. If you can't believe in that standard in operational integrity, then your most rational reaction when being prosecuted for a criminal indictment would be to flee the country.

You could implement your own version of the SSL libraries that don't implement "weak" encryption protocols. When confronted by a client/server session that tried to default to the vulnerable mode, the client would get a "no failover" error message. The homebrew version would be no help in "forcing" a secure SSL session, and the browser/server would not be standards "compliant". Oh well. Oh, it would have to be a browser with available source code; hello firefox, goodbye safari.

Are you suggesting that Seal Team Six have magical powers that lets them operate inside the heart of Russian territory without the likelihood of being captured?

No its not. A plea bargain agreement is the defendant agreeing to plead guilty to certain crimes in exchange for a sentence agreed to by the prosecution. Sadly, its still possible for today's federal gov't to "disappear" a person into Guantanamo or a black site, and that is "effectively" a directed verdict.

US lawyers can form a legal agreement with the DOJ as to the form of legal prosecution which would be acceptable to both parties. My guess would be no Star Chambers, and a public federal criminal prosecution will all legal rights that a US defendant are afforded. The potential sticky point would be Snowden providing the prosecutors/DNI to the best of his knowledge, the information he did procure, to avoid a situation where sensitive information gets leaked in court, or federal prosecutors be given the ability to "close" trial sessions. And of course, the DOJ's willingness to cut their losses concerning Snowden; I doubt Snowden would agree to a twenty year prison sentence.

Ironically, any POTUS that tried to pardon/commute Snowden's sentence would get the full wrath of the US Intelligence community. POTUS's have been trying to negotiate away Pollard for years; I hope that traitor dies in a US federal prison.

Apparently, you do not have a clear understanding of how the US legal system works. If the DOJ makes a promise in a legal contract, it will have to follow that contract. To improperly reneg on that contract would jeopardize every legal contract the US government makes across the world. The US's power is embedded in law; to publicly violate it would unravel the US. And finally, you need to get a realistic grasp of Snowden's situation. His ability to further damage the US government is probably negligible. His value in "disappearing him into Gitmo" is also zero, because it will never happen with current protocols. He's negotiating jail time for "crimes" he knows he would be successfully prosecuted for, in exchange for the US to make the best "example" of Snowden they can manage. But the US DOJ will have to agree to operate above board, with a standard criminal prosecution; no "Star" courts.

I'd sooner trust a "dishonest" blogger like Glenn Greenwald than an anonymous coward like you.

Yeah, Ukraine would never trade Snowden to the US for military aid against Russia.

The abuse of the H-1B system is minimal right now, because there are roughly 100K individuals to "exploit". Its when the economy picks up, and employers want to increase the employment pool by 1 million, that's when the H-1B system is going to be used to drive down salaries. (Of course, that's assuming the system right now is being selective about who gets to be the "lucky" 100K picked.)

People have no clue how nuclear power plants work. The power that gets generated has to go somewhere, which is the power grid. If the nuclear power plant's connection to the grid gets severed (by bad weather, in this case), the power still has to go somewhere, or else it melts down the connecting infrastructure, and eventually triggers a nuclear meltdown situation. This is readily avoided by shutting down the reactor (before the problem starts) but since it can take a day before the reactor can be put back to operation, its a pain in the ass that management likes to avoid. Its like trying to stop a train in motion; you can't stop it with 30 seconds of advance notice.

The NYPD does this to islamic prayer groups, why wouldn't they do it to teenagers?

"First the came for the Socialists, but I was not a Socialist..."

Ugh, she nearly got me too. But the commercial so annoys me, its not going to happen.

lol