Sorry, but your internet bravado may be noble, but I would rather not be put on a list and deal with the 6 or 8 FBI agents showing up at 9am at front and back doors.

Plus of course I am at work, and that is just another layer of hassle I am not going to deal with just to find the name of something I couldn't remember.

Knowing what battles are worth fighting and which ones are worth ignoring is being smart IMO.

I am sorry, but I'd forgotten how, at trial, James Earl Ray mounted a defense saying that he'd iced Dr. King in order that the country might have more effective gun control.....We have no idea what damage Snowden may or may not have caused. The NSA would like to tell us but, goshdarnit, they just can't. And, of course, they are all honorable men. This is so far off the plane of the ecliptic that Toobin's already halfway to Mars..
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This is both mendacious and completely ahistorical. Snowden here is not remotely comparing anyone at the NSA to the Nazis, unless you believe that the Nuremberg principles, which were adopted after the defeat of Nazi Germany, were adopted merely to prevent the rise of the Fourth Reich somewhere in the world. Rather, they were statements in law acknowledging that what Hitler's Germany did changed the paradigm of both nationalism and patriotism forever by perverting both of those concepts to monstrous ends. They apply universally. Is Toobin seriously arguing that the United States is, simply through its own inherent goodness, a place where the principles it primarily expounded do not apply? To say a country violated them is not to say that country is run by Nazis. It is to say that a country should check itself before it wrecks itself, and that its citizens have obligations to the common humanity that may supersede adherence to national laws. This is something with which, among other folks, Dr. King would have agreed.
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Ah, the old "liberal anti-Communist" position gets rebooted for the 21st Century. If Toobin wants to accuse Snowden of espionage, he should man-up and do it. Otherwise, this is just incoherent. We can't have "some legitimate debate about the extent and legality of American surveillance operations" because one side of the debate is swathed in secrecy and duplicity. (There is simply no logical reason to take anything the NSA says on this topic in good faith.) As to the plight of Chinese and Russian dissidents, if Toobin can demonstrate plausibly how, in revealing to Americans what their government has been about, Edward Snowden has somehow made their plight worse, then he should show his work. Otherwise, he's just waving the bloody shirt. Read the whole thing

Toobin's campaign against Snowden and in defense of the government's right to protect sensitive national security secrets is incredibly hypocritical, given his past history.

In journalist Michael Isikoff's book, Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story, he described how Toobin was caught "having absconded with large loads of classified and grand-jury related documents from the office of Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh" in 1991:

Toobin, it turned out, had been using his tenure in Walsh's office to secretly prepare a tell-all book about the Iran-contra case; the privileged documents, along with a meticulously kept private diary (in which the young Toobin, a sort of proto-Linda Tripp, had been documenting private conversations with his unsuspecting colleagues) were to become his prime bait to snare a book deal.   Toobin's conduct enraged his fellow lawyers in Walsh's office, many of whom viewed his actions as an indefensible betrayal of the public trust.  Walsh at one point even considered pressing for Toobin's indictment.

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In 1991, the New York Times published this editorial by John P. MacKenzie on Toobin's book on the criminal investigation into Iran-Contra. It lambasted Toobin and the concluding paragraph was the following:

Lawyers often write self-praising books, but they don't usually betray clients and bosses or spill secrets that aren't theirs to sell. Mr. Toobin is no First Amendment hero but an opportunistic practitioner who searched for contract loopholes while his colleagues focused on Iran-contra. One wonders whether Mr. Toobin, as a junior Federal prosecutor now or in practice later, will need an ironclad no-publish contract to win the trust of his witnesses, clients or superiors. link

You think they would have released Miranda if those "documents related to Mr. Greenwald's investigation" were classified documents?

Do they think that their doings will be a secret forever?  That is foolish, few ongoing things remain secret for long.

I get the impression though that some leaders have come to believe that you can get us all used to having no privacy and the abuses that come from that.  That is why Sunstein keeps coming to mind for me.  Some of the things I have read about him, he is all about boiling frogs.  No authentic true North, just kind of what you can get away with and how to go about that, but it is all for the greater good you see.

There are any number of political pundits and media-types from across the political spectrum whom I don't find to be credible, for the most part based on what they are saying at any given moment.  I don't, for example,  have to look at Michele Malkin's body of work to deem her not worth paying attention to - I can guarantee you she is saying something stupid, crazy or some kind of "ist" at this very moment that earns her that designation.  

And there are plenty of media-types more in the center or whom others deem "progressive" who may not be crazy, but they are sloppy and disingenuous and more concerned with maintaining their exclusive access to the halls of power than they are in challenging that power.  I don't hold them in much regard, either.

So, sure - I reject, sometimes out of hand, even the more sensible-sounding comments of people like Ron Paul or Ted Cruz because I know it's window dressing - it doesn't mean anything when considered with all their other positions.  It's the same reason why I don't wear a watch that's only right twice a day - because the rest of the day, it's always wrong.

I've never claimed that Glenn Greenwald cannot be wrong, or that he never makes mistakes.  He can be stubborn to the point of mulishness if he thinks he's right, sometimes long after the argument has descended into sand-throwing.  He's human, after all.  

I learn things when I read his columns.  He sends me to other sources, which can lead me to even more sources, so I can round out my knowledge and work on my own opinions about what's going on in the world.  He's not afraid of power, he doesn't court it, or kiss it's a$$, and he pushes for answers.  I imagine sometimes what the state of affairs would be if we had a media as willing to push and confront as he and a very few others are.  

As as starting point, (and I posted this in another thread), Wiki says this:

While spousal communications in England and Wales are no longer privileged, section 80 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (as amended) gives spouses or civil partners of defendants protection against being compelled by the prosecution to testify, except in limited circumstances.
A spouse or civil partner of a defendant is almost always considered a competent witness for either side, and may choose to testify for or against their spouse. A defendant may, when relevant, compel their spouse or civil partner to testify on their behalf. The prosecution however, may only compel the testimony of the defendant's spouse or civil partner in cases of domestic abuse or violence or sexual offences towards persons under 16. When the spouse or civil partner is a co-defendant to the charges, they may not be compelled to testify.

Note that while this gives special recognition to spousal relationships and civil partnerships, the law does not provide for a privilege and it is never possible to exclude evidence solely on the basis that it was a private conversation between a married couple.