No country in Europe for instance would extradite if a death penalty worthy charge was made beforehand.
This thought also ignores the fact that the USG does not in fact wield the charge of treason casually. John Walker Lindh, for instance, wasn't charged with treason, despite being charged with deliberately planning and conspiring to murder American troops.
I'm not saying there is any bait and switch going on (I think they're above petty revenge killing), but are there any previous instances where the USG charged someone for a "parking violation" style minor crime to facilitate extradition?
I can't remember the exact case but the U.S. has done this before, IIRC, to Canada. Something about a state extraditing someone for trial in a state court (with a firm agreement to leave off the death penalty) and then the Federal prosecutor swoops in out of nowhere to bring Federal charges that do carry the death penalty.
Edit: Take the above with a grain of salt though, I've spent some time searching for this case (which should be quite famous) and have come up with nothing. The closest was the Söring case where the U.K. has to obtain assurances from both Virginia and the U.S. that the death penalty would not be applied... and it wasn't.
Remember, many of the noisest and most obnoxious people in Congress were elected by mere thousands of voters from American backwaters.
I don't quite follow the argument that those are not senior officials (the speaker of the house definitely qualifies as such, being second in line after the VP to be named President). The fact that people in a position like that are making such calls surely carries some weight with other, less senior officials and might sway a bunch of them to agree with it if only to not be seen as weak.
The thousands of voters from American backwaters collectively seem to command a rather large chunk of the legislative power in the USA.
The numbers scale up a bit for Feinstein, who at least holds statewide office, but the end result is no different.
This isn't a fiddly technical point. The separation of powers between the Legislative and Executive branches is fundamental to our system of government. In cases where dingbat representatives try to rabble-rouse for unwarranted treason charges, you can see why the founders were smart to divest the Legislature of the power to enforce the laws they enact.
And the US government would try anything to get him, like grounding the planes of presidents of other countries on suspicion that he might be there. Er, wait, they actually did that!
Are you really sure that the treason charge won't happen once he's jailed? The treason would expose him to the death penalty, one more good legal ground to give him asylum.
Still whatever the charges against Snowden are, they are going to claim on the court that he aided the enemies, just like in Manning's case ("bin Laden himself wanted to read that, that automatically means Manning aided bin Laden.")
I'm not making a substantive argument about Snowden's charges, except to point out that the notion of "aiding America's enemies" has force only when coupled with intent. Treason isn't a strict liability crime.
Trust me, if they wanted to go get him, they would. Right now it's still a very public story, and doing anything in haste would shed more bad light on the admin and vilify what Snowden is doing.
Once the story dies down is when you need to start paying attention.
Just in case you were wondering. . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case
"Abu Omar was abducted on February 17, 2003, in Milan by the CIA.[1] and transported to the Aviano Air Base, from which he was transferred to Egypt, where he was secluded, interrogated and allegedly tortured and abused"
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15198047/ns/world_news-terrorism/t...
"Al-Masri, a former car salesman and a father of five, said he was abducted on Dec. 31, 2003, at the Serbia-Macedonia border while on vacation. He said he was taken to a hotel in the Macedonian capital of Skopje where he was imprisoned and tortured for 23 days before being flown to Kabul, Afghanistan."
What's missing from this point is intent. If the USG believed that Snowden had set out to aid America's enemies, he'd have been charged with treason.