There are traitors among us.

So this Edward Snowden saga continues to keep me interested as I have tuned myself in and out of this story since it's inception. Having arrived in Moscow on June 23, on a direct flight from Hong Kong (where he did his leaking), Snowden has now left the airport and has been granted some sort of asylum in Russia. Apparently, I'm not the only one who continues to pay attention to this story as a quick Google search of 'Edward Snowden' draws nearly a billion [yea' BILLION] hits in just 0.22 seconds, i.e. Google is super-quick.

I heard an educator use this quote earlier in the week, "We don't need to give students information, they can get information anywhere. It's our job as educators to help them UNDERSTAND that information." Diving into it's source, who wrote it, who were their sources, how old is the source, is it relevant, etc... And, if you dissect this story down to individual pieces, I'd be willing to bet, one of those pieces would be named 'Information.' Our government trusted this individual to handle this classified information with the utmost integrity, and he turned into a traitor.

One of my sources, who will remain nameless, has told me that he's been labeled as a traitor inside Booz Allen. An obvious understatement given the circumstances, which my source certainly agrees. Nevertheless, this self-deprecated hero, has taken highly-classified information that belonged to the US Government, and American people, and distributed it to the world and in turn our adversaries throughout the globe. Snowden---you're a low life, hapless-thug, and may God help you if what you've done has put innocent Americans at risk, along with our men and women working in embassies abroad, AND, members of our Armed Forces deployed to the corners of the Earth keeping us safe and free.

The other interesting caveat to this story, in my opinion, is how President Obama will deal with President Putin. I recently had an opportunity to visit the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA and on display you learn how far our relationship with the former USSR and Russia has come since the days of the Cold War. I'd like to think the Great Communicator is rolling in his grave at Snowden's actions, and I'd like to think that Gorbachev would have had Snowden on the 'first cargo plane full of rubber dog-shit out of Moscow,' hand-cuffed, with a little red bow on his neck and a toe-tag that said, please deliver to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC, USA.

But here we are, 2013, and its not Reagan/Gorbachev--it's Obama/Putin, and iiWii, there are traitors among us, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out going forward.