Biden says he is ‘considering’ Australian call to drop Julian Assange charges

Assange is by a large margin less altruistic than the other two - all three have paid a steep penalty for their actions, though.

He commuted her sentence.

If the options are "pardon" and "not pardon", "not pardon" just means he stays in that exact same precarious situation. At least a pardon stands to change it, with the added benefit of being morally correct.

He was literally extradited to the US? Of course he can be pardoned, the US is the country hunting him

Whether Assange is one of those is debatable, but the US has a lot of weight to throw around and Wikileaks offended the government specifically. So here we are.

Isn't there some big nuclear submarine deal going on right now between America and Australia?

His human rights should absolutely be respected, but I think the world will be a worse place with this guy running around.

As a messenger, his organization turned a blind eye on one side (WikiLeaks refused to publish Russian government documents: Report, WikiLeaks Turned Down Leaks on Russian Government During U.S. Presidential Campaign) and instead collaborated with them, to the degree of forging messages and using leaks to distract from equally newsworthy dirty laundry.

I'd compare him to a cop who selectively polices crime gang A but ignores crime gang B. And whose phone number is found with members of crime gang B, together with evidence that they could call the cop at any time (and did so) to appear inside crime gang A's territory. Yes, technically, the cop has apprehended more criminals than either of us ever will and we could give him a medal for his work (and crime gang B is certainly motivated to help that along to get this cop more entrenched and promoted).

He would be easier to support if he had just kept releasing important news/evidence when it was morally justified, and not got into the more questionable activities of private intelligence - such as election meddling.

Bad move on his part, makes him a lot harder to defend.

A million people died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, despite global protests and outrage. Sometimes it feels like there must be better systems than the current set up of "democracy".

He's an absolute scum bag and is directly responsible for Trump's election.

That said, my personal feelings about him are irrelevant. Whistle-blowers are an important part of democracy and must be protected.

You speak as if revenge itself isn't it's own benefit.

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It’s kind of dumb that Biden gets to be a great president just for erasing some of the mess Trump made. I miss the days when we were actually talking about things like better healthcare, meaningful gun legislation, and education, not back to basic human fucking rights.

Not trying to disparage this list, but we all know the Paris Agreement is bullshit, and not a single country is on pace to meet it, despite signing it.

FYI, the biggest thing Biden had done for climate change is indefinitely halt approvals for LNG export terminals in the US, this headline went completely under most people’s radar (Biden did a trash job of even trying to make a big deal out of it) but environmental activists and experts like Bill Mckibben say this is actually a massive deal. Decades of investment won’t be put into export terminals and so the incentive to keep going down the LNG road becomes significantly less attractive for energy companies.

results, though?

Foreign Policy - ended the war in Afghanistan (no big deal I guess lmfao)

Yeah... and look at how that turned out.

Or getting mandatory the overtime pay cutoff more than doubled, OTC birth control, investment in renewables and infrastructure, new anti-redlining regulations, fighting junk fees in finance, advising the DEA to reschedule MJ, domestic semiconductor investment, getting more pro-union leadership back at the NLRB, better consumer protections for flight delays an cancelations, healthcare for veteran burn pit victims…

I wish the guy was further left but there’s plenty of stuff he’s gotten done that under four more years of the orange menace would have never happened.

I'm genuinely curious, is that how it works? If you refinance, the new loan loses the "student loan" earmark and you're no longer eligible? Or did you consolidate two/multiple loans and the student loan was one of them?

It sounds a bit unfair in the former case because in my mind it's still the student loan debt, just with (hopefully) better conditions.

But I agree, it's good that at least some headway has been made. I miss the "investment into the future" perspective we had from before the news became so gloomy :)