Snowden asks for pardon from President Obama

How did a guy who’s against authoritarian governments that spy on their citizens end up in Vladmir Putin’s Russia? Snowden blames the State Department for revoking his passport after he left Hong Kong, but why is he in Moscow?

If Snowden wanted to stop the NSA’s practices in 2013, then why didn’t he, as former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell suggested in his book “The Great War of Our Time,” simply copy a couple of documents and mail them to the Washington Post instead of downloading 1.7 million documents and taking them to China?

If Obama pardons the biggest leaker of all time, then won’t he also have to pardon others — Chelsea Manning, former CIA chief David Petraeus — who also shared classified information?

If Obama pardons Snowden, then how does the intelligence community keep secrets in the future?

Better to make this a morality play than a hard-boiled look at the cost of these leaks to U.S. intelligence and America’s allies.