This evening's music features Chicago bluesman Earl Hooker.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

Petraeus Plea Deal Reveals Two-Tier Justice System for Leaks

David Petraeus, the former Army general and CIA director, admitted today that he gave highly-classified journals to his onetime lover and that he lied to the FBI about it. But he only has to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor that will not involve a jail sentence thanks to a deal with federal prosecutors. The deal is yet another example of a senior official treated leniently for the sorts of violations that lower-level officials are punished severely for.

According to the plea deal, Petraeus, while leading American forces in Afghanistan, maintained eight notebooks that he filled with highly-sensitive information about the identities of covert officers, military strategy, intelligence capabilities and his discussions with senior government officials, including President Obama. Rather than handing over these “Black Books,” as the plea agreement calls them, to the Department of Defense when he retired from the military in 2011 to head the CIA, Petraeus retained them at his home and lent them, for several days, to Paula Broadwell, his authorized biographer and girlfriend. ...

Under his deal with prosecutors, Petraeus pleaded guilty to just one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information, a misdemeanor that can be punishable by a year in jail, though the deal calls only for probation and a $40,000 fine. As The New York Times noted today, the deal “allows Mr. Petraeus to focus on his lucrative post-government career as a partner in a private equity firm and a worldwide speaker on national security issues.”

The deal has another effect: it all but confirms a two-tier justice system in which senior officials are slapped on the wrist for serious violations while lesser officials are harshly prosecuted for relatively minor infractions.

Edward Snowden ready to return to U.S., lawyer says

“Snowden is ready to return to the States, but on the condition that he is given a guarantee of a legal and impartial trial,” his Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said at a news conference Tuesday, as quoted by Russian state media outlet TASS. ...

Despite a 2013 letter from Attorney General Eric Holder that promised Snowden would not face the death penalty upon his return, Kucherena said he wants assurances of a fair trial as well.

“That is, they guarantee that Snowden will not be executed, not that he will receive a fair trial. And it is guaranteed by attorney [general] who cannot even influence court decisions according to law,” Kucherena was quoted as saying.

Jesselyn Radack, one of Snowden’s American legal advisers, says Kucherena’s statement echoes what they’ve been saying all along. Were Snowden to return, he would face charges under the World War I-era Espionage Act.

“Snowden would be amenable to coming back to the United States for the kind of plea bargain that Gen. [David] Petraeus received,” Radack said, reacting to news that the former general admitted to providing classified information to his mistress while he led the Central Intelligence Agency.

Senior Official Confirms Obama's AUMF Intentionally Ambiguous to Allow Broad War Powers

Another high-ranking Obama administration official confirmed on Tuesday that the White House's proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the war on ISIS was left intentionally vague to allow for expansive—and potentially limitless—presidential war-making powers.

Since the AUMF was submitted to Congress last month, it has been the topic of debate within and beyond Washington, DC. Many have raised concerns about its broad terms, which impose no geographic limitations, broadly define the "enemy," allow for deployment of ground combat forces, and leave the controversial 2001 AUMF intact.

The Obama administration has waffled on just how extensive the powers granted in the proposed AUMF are. When he initially submitted the proposal on February 11, Obama claimed it "would not authorize long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those our Nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan." ...

And just a few weeks later, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry clarified the AUMF indeed allows for the deployment of combat forces, without clarifying concrete limitations to boots-on-the-ground.

'They looked like Isis': masked raid led to 'kidnapping' at Chicago police site

When the group of armed masked men burst into Eddie’s Sandwiches in Chicago, John Vergara initially thought he had walked into a stickup. Their guns were drawn, and they told everyone at Eddie’s that afternoon to put their hands on the counter.

Vergara, an art teacher who had stopped in for a coffee, remembered: “At first I thought it was a robbery. I didn’t know it was the police until the sergeant walked in.”

The cops had “machine guns – I mean, I’m talking about rifles,” recalled Jose Garcia, then a cook at Eddie’s. “They all had masks, all of them. They looked like Isis – put it that way.”

It was September 29 2011, and it was just the beginning of an ordeal Vergara and Garcia say led to police holding them – along with the sandwich-shop owner and two others – for eight or nine hours, without any public notice of their whereabouts, without a visit from their lawyers, or without even a phone call. ...

Though the masked police demanded confessions, Vergara and Garcia told the Guardian, everything changed that night in 2011 once Vergara dropped the name of a prominent Chicago civil-rights attorney. Only then, they said, did the police let all but one of the Homan five go – on the condition that Vergara promise not to tell the attorney anything about what happened. ...

One week after the Homan Square revelations began, the Chicago police department continues to deny in unspecific statements that there is anything untoward about the facility ... But now the Guardian has interviewed nine people, seven of them Chicagoans, who have told notably consistent stories about police holding them in Homan Square for hours – and, in one case, days – without providing any way to notify their families or their lawyers as to where they are.

Backed by attorneys and local activists, these citizens point to Homan Square as the latest example of Chicago policing tactics run amok – and of American police officers growing over-militarized and threatening to the very communities, particularly black and brown ones, they are supposed to protect.

Also of interest:

Netanyahu, 'Censored Voices,' and the False Narrative of Self-Defense