Rand Paul Muses About ‘Dueling” His Accusers

In the 1800s, so many Kentuckians were killing one another in duels that the Legislature saw fit to require that incoming state office holders swear an oath that they had not fought in a duel, issued a challenge for a duel or assisted at a duel, “so help me God.”

The state’s explicit ban on dueling, still on the books, may provide some comfort to those journalists who recently accused Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, of lifting wording for a speech from a Wikipedia entry about the science-fiction movie “Gattaca.”

Asked about the accusations on Sunday, Mr. Paul, a man of normally courtly demeanor, appeared to grit his teeth. The senator is considered a top Republican presidential prospect for 2016, and such charges can do harm.

“I take it as an insult, and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting,” he said, dismissing his critics as “hacks and haters.” Presumably in jest, Mr. Paul added: “If dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, it’d be a duel challenge.”

The plagiarism story was first reported on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, and the website BuzzFeed followed up, describing a speech from June in which Mr. Paul appeared to have lifted words from a separate Wikipedia entry.

Mr. Paul insisted, in an appearance Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” that he normally gives credit where it is due. He said that he often credited primary sources but, favoring extemporaneous speaking, sometimes neglected to cite secondary ones.

He promised, going forward, to do more “footnoting.”

Clemency for Snowden? U.S. Officials Say No

If Edward J. Snowden believes he deserves clemency for his disclosures of classified government documents because they provoked an important public debate about the reach of American spying, he has failed to sway the White House and at least two key members of Congress.

The chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein of California, and her House counterpart, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, gave sharply negative answers on Sunday when asked whether they believed Mr. Snowden had made a case for clemency.

“He was trusted, he stripped our system. He had an opportunity - if what he was was a whistleblower - to pick up the phone and call the House intelligence committee, the Senate intelligence committee, and say I have some information,” Ms. Feinstein said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” But “that didn’t happen.”

“He’s done this enormous disservice to our country,” she said, “and I think the answer is, no clemency.”

Mr. Rogers was equally adamant.

“No, I don’t see any reason” to grant clemency, he said on the same program. “I wouldn’t do that. He needs to come back and own up. We can have those conversations, if he believes there are vulnerabilities he’d like to disclose.”

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior White House adviser, said on the ABC program “This Week” that there had been no consideration of clemency, and that Mr. Snowden should return to the United States to face charges.

Mr. Snowden’s argument - made in a “Manifesto for the Truth” published on Sunday by the German news magazine Der Spiegel, and in a letter to American officials handed to a leftist German politician who met with Mr. Snowden in Moscow - was that he has started a useful debate about whether American spies are overreaching with the help of enormously powerful technology and should be reined in.

Federal prosecutors have charged Mr. Snowden with theft and with two violations of the Espionage Act of 1917. But Mr. Snowden, who has taken refuge in Russia, has denied any treasonous intent, saying he disclosed secrets to the news media, not to hostile foreign powers, and did so to push for reform.

“Instead of causing damage, the usefulness of the new public knowledge for society is now clear because reforms to politics, supervision and laws are being suggested,” he wrote in der Spiegel. “Citizens have to fight against the suppression of information about affairs of essential importance for the public. Those who speak the truth are not committing a crime.”

Indeed, Ms. Feinstein is among those who have raised the question of overreach by the N.S.A. and the need for possible reform, particularly after reports that the N.S.A. had long monitored the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

Ms. Feinstein said Sunday that she strongly supported a White House review to consider a more appropriate framework for intelligence operations. She wants her committee to conduct its own review.

Tapping the private phones of close allies, she said, “has much more political liability than probably intelligence viability, and I think we ought to look at it carefully. I believe the president is doing that.”

As to the question of whether President Obama could have been unaware of such phone monitoring - and whether the Europeans who have expressed outrage over N.S.A. espionage could have been truly surprised that such high-level spying goes on - Mr. Rogers replied with a touch of irony.

“I think there’s going to be some Best Actor awards coming out of the White House this year, and Best Supporting Actor awards coming out of the European Union,” he said.

He insisted that fundamentally, the N.S.A. was doing the work it had been created to do, a point that Ms. Feinstein said she largely shared.