"Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."

However, American's really don't like the idea of an overly powerful government watching over your shoulder. The idea that the government is supposedly using gathering this information and that it doesn't even have a legitimate use case is unappealing to most.

Many parents would rather that their children not visit the home of a friend that had guns in it. Would as many parents be apprehensive about sending their children to a home with a pool? I suspect not.

There may be legitimate reasons that they are treated differently in a way that does not immediately make sense when you examine the risks they pose, but I don't think that choice or lack of it is that reason. I think that you are looking for something more subtle.

I wouldn't leave my kids at any place that I felt was going to be a tangible danger to them - be that a house with a pool and a back door that doesn't have a child lock or pool gate, or a house of an irresponsible gun owner, or a house with exposed electrical wiring, or anything else that I feel poses a material threat to my child's life.

Most Americans haven't thought about it hard enough to make a meaningful personal decision and have allowed themselves to adopt the first external opinion they were offered, so it's about 50-50 pro-con on the question.

What you're doing, is giving yourself permission to not engage other people about the issue. "Oh, I don't need to talk to grandma, I'm sure she's already on my side."

  "If they had taught a class on how to be the kind
  of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have
  finished high school."

Actual outcomes need to be weighed against counterfactuals, and I think the claim that the alternative would have been worse in Cheney's case - while I dispute it - is better than in the other.

Having said that Cheney had a lot of power and a lot of impact. In relative terms the alternative to Cheney in power does not need to be much better to result in an absolute impact greater than the 4 lives affected by that rapist.

My statement was meant to point out that the absolute rather than the relative "evilness" of him is a viable reason for some to hate him.

"No thanks!"

We can do this all day...

If the person is trying to deceive you they will attempt to deceive you. Well, duh.

Based on his answer, he probably did give sensitive information to the Chinese.

The things you can learn if you click the link, huh?

Who have the journalists passed it along to, voluntarily or through coercion? We have no idea. Once it's out of his hands, Snowden himself can't know for sure.

Are we supposed to believe that Chinese intelligence has been wringing its hands for the past decade, just wishing a US whistleblower would reveal a bunch of stuff to the media so they can figure out what's going on? They do have real spies, you know.

This is a smokescreen.

I'm saying, he very possibly gave sensitive information to the Chinese government, perhaps inadvertently or through indiscretion. You don't have to be a Chinese spy to do that (he was actually the one who presented the false equivalence).

The issue here is an attempt to paint him as influenced or controlled by the Chinese in his decision to take documents, which would instantly make him reviled by a lot of people who will hail him as a hero as long as believe he did it of his own accord.