Wiretap: Snowden won, for now, and you can’t smoke pot in line for the gondola

OK, so it’s funny that Edward Snowden would send out a Christmas message. But how Snowden helped change the world is almost certainly the story of the year. And his 14-hour interview with Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, Snowden’s first in-person interview since his arrival in Moscow, is one of the year-ending must-reads.

Snowden says his mission is accomplished in changing the NSA. “I already won,” he tells the Washington Post.

Ski and pot tours now running in Colorado. And, no, people, you can’t just spark up in line for the gondola. Coloradoan.

Pat Buchanan and Vladimir Putin: Culture War Allies. Yeah, really. Via Harold Meyerson.

British war hero, who was key to breaking the Nazi code, is pardoned for the crime of being gay. Sixty years later. All the other gays of the time who were locked up and/or chemically castrated, not pardoned. Via Washington Post.

OK, so things have changed. Now the pot guy is the mayor. Via the New York Times.

France is looking for a few good women — to add to the list of the illustrious hailed at the Pantheon. Got any ideas? Via the New Yorker.

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