
Illustration by Fernando Alfonso III
President Obama will now be forced to weigh in on the public’s desire to pardon PRISM whistleblower Edward Snowden, despite a carefully crafted effort to neither praise nor condemn him.
A We the People petition titled “Pardon Edward Snowden” reached the requisite 100,000 signatures Saturday morning. By the Obama administration’s own rules, any petition that reaches that threshold will receive a formal response from the White House, though there’s no formal timetable for the official comment.