Which Democrat wants to bring Edward Snowden home?

The clearest division between the Democratic presidential hopefuls in Tuesday night’s debate came with regards to Edward Snowden, the former Central Intelligence Agency employee and government contractor who leaked classified documents that exposed the extent to which the American public’s privacy had been compromised in the name of national security.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was especially tough on Snowden, saying his tactics ignored existing protections he had before his leaks.

Bernie Sanders and Jim Webb gave strong reminders that most of the Democrats are better than most of the Republicans on civil liberties.

There is a consensus among all the major politicians running for president in America, regardless of their party: Edward Snowden, they all say, deserves to face federal prosecutors for illegally leaking vast troves detailed information about government surveillance programs to the press. But it was a long discussion about serious issues, and a few of the exchanges bear closer inspection-including the one about Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who is now languishing in Russian Federation.

Chafee noted that the vote was inevitable (“another 99 to one vote for the Patriot Act”) but that he didn’t view it this way.

“It was necessary to make sure that we were able, after 9/11, to put in place the security that was needed”, Clinton said.

ClINTON: In addition-in addition, he stole very important information that has unfortunately fallen into a lot of the wrong hands.

Lincoln Chafee said he would bring Snowden home from Russian Federation, where he is now living in exile.

“I think DOJ handled that entire situation terribly and in a manner that was way too heavy-handed”, he said. He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistleblower.

Snowden has said that he would be willing to serve time in jail, going as far as offering himself up to the government.

“I think Snowden played a very important role in educating the American people to the degree in which our civil liberties and our constitutional rights are being undermined”, Bernie Sanders pointed out, immediately after Clinton spoke. “But I think what he did in educating us should be taken into consideration”.

Two of the other candidates on stage, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Virginia Sen. The courts have ruled that what he did-what he did was say the American… “If he really believes that, he should be back here”, O’Malley said. But once he did, no law offers Snowden any shelter.

“I would leave his ultimate judgment to the legal system,” he said. Here’s what I do believe. “I also believe he could have legitimately notified the committees of [the Justice Department’s] past failure to properly notify criminal defendants that Section 215 program information was being relied upon in their prosecution, as well as concerns that [the] NSA was not properly applying its minimization procedures”.

And one of the things I did during the FISA bill of 2007 was introduce, with Russ Feingold, two amendments, basically saying we understand the realities of how you have to collect this broad information in the Internet age. And they need to be destroyed.