Leftists and libertarians who join them in their “national security state” rhetoric love Edward Snowden for leaking thousands of classified documents to leftist journalist Glenn Greenwald and to The Washington Post, exposing and compromising U.S. surveillance programs. 

On Monday night, the public radio show “The World” – distributed to NPR stations across America by Minneapolis-based Public Radio International – oozed online that Snowden was “bigger than a rock star” in his appearance at an ACLU event at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. That same line was announced by anchorman Marco Werman: