It is time for President Obama to offer clemency to Edward Snowden, the courageous U.S. citizen who revealed the Orwellian reach of the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance of Americans. His actions may have broken the law, but his act, as the New York Times editorialized, did the nation “a great service.”In an interview that the Nation magazine is publishing this week, Nation Contributing Editor Stephen Cohen and I asked Snowden his definition of patriotism. He sensibly argues patriotism is not “acting to benefit the government,” but to “act on behalf of one’s country. . . . You’re not patriotic just because you back whoever’s in power today. . . . You’re patriotic when you work to improve the lives of the people of your country,” including protecting their rights.Read More.The Washington Post, Opinions/Katrina Vanden Heuvel