The great fallacy of the attempt to demonize Edward Snowden — coming these days primarily from hardcore Obama cultists — is the argument that in a democracy we have other means of combating an overreaching government. But how can we complain to our elected representatives about government actions that we have no knowledge of, that even our elected representatives are not allowed to talk about — that we can only learn about from people who will go to jail if they tell us about them?

Obama says he “welcomes” a national debate on this subject — a subject he has marshaled the awesome machinery of the American state to keep secret from the American people.

This is getting Orwellian to a degree that even Orwell might have found it hard to imagine.