New York Times media correspondent David Carr: “If you add up the pulling of news organization phone records (The Associated Press), the tracking of individual reporters (Fox News), and the effort by the current administration to go after sources (seven instances and counting in which a government official has been criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news media), suggesting that there is a war on the press is less hyperbole than simple math.”

AP president Gary Pruitt: "Longtime sources have stopped talking to the Associated Press in response to the Obama administration’s secret seizure of the wire service’s phone records. This chilling effect is not just at AP, it’s happening at other news organizations as well. Journalists from other news organizations have personally told me it has intimidated sources from speaking to them."

Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News Chuck Todd: "You end up essentially criminalizing journalism when it comes to reporting on the federal government, particularly on national security. You know, I’ve had different conversations with people over the last week who are sitting there not quite comfortable having certain conversations on the phone."

Would it stretch your moral intellect to google any of the above? The US has successfully criminalized real journalism so there is no need to kill. Not a whole lot better.

> The U.S., as far as anyone has demonstrated, does not set out to kill journalists because what they write is inconvenient.

I remember that prior to the invasion of Iraq, the US said that any journalist that is not embedded with US troops is fair game. That does sound like they didn't mind killing journalists they don't control.

This attitude also clearly shows in the bombing of the Al Jazeera offices in Baghdad, Bush's 2004 idea of bombing the Al Jazeera HQ in Qatar, or the attack on the Palestine Hotel.

The United States government traffics drugs such as heroin [1], has started wars under false pretenses to profit multi-national corporations [2] [3], backs death squads in Indonesia [4], tried to convince Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide [5], has conducted covert operations to dismantle and replace government structures across the world [6], has conducted experiments involving drugs like LSD on unwilling participants [7], is known to kidnap and torture people [8] [9], intercepts phone calls in the United States and collects every piece of information they can disregarding the constitution [10] [11] [12], performs drone strikes that kill innocent civilians [13], and kills American citizens without due process [14] [15]. Do you honestly believe they haven't killed any vocal opponents including journalists? If so, that is massively dangerous thinking.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Politics_of_Heroin_in_South...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_war

[4] http://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/19/the_act_of_killing_new...

[5] http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/01/21/the-fbi-wrote-a-lette...

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_re...

[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_and_the_United_States

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_el-Masri

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

[13] http://dirtywars.org

[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

[15] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/us/us-acknowledges-killing...

Edit: Saw another comment and did some more digging. Found a great article which I'll quote some of. You can find a link to it below.

"On April 8, 2003, during the US-led invasion of Iraq, Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Ayoub was killed when a US warplane bombed Al Jazeera's headquarters in Baghdad."

"Disturbingly, more journalists were murdered in targeted killings in Iraq than died in combat-related circumstances, according to the group Committee to Protect Journalists."

""Between 2003 and 2010 more than 30 Iraqi journalists were detained and held in prisons in Iraq by the Americans," she explained. "All of these journalists were arbitrarily arrested by the Americans, just as they continue to be arrested by the Iraqi government today.""

http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/04/201348120278145...

Are you talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby the one who got off the hook by President Bush's personal intervention? How is that surprising that he got so little?

You really assume that Obama would commute Snowden's sentence? Really?

Maybe they will let Dick Cheney shoot him in the face with a shotgun.

So, the fact he hasn't means he will not?

And what crystal ball are you using to predict the out come of a hypothetical trial?