The law is the law! A 54 percent majority of Americans may approve of Edward Snowden’s sensational leak about the National Security Agency’s indiscriminate surveillance — but just as many think the whistleblower should be prosecuted. The penalty is not light: the three (so far) charges against Snowden carry a sentence up to 30 years. But rules are rules, and despite our national self-image as rebels who buck systems and distrust government, we are, as one recent study bears out, the most obedient people in the industrialized world. And the most legalistic. The law is the law!

This tautology ought to be unquestionable, axiomatic, airtight. Instead, it carries a whiff of desperation, as we see increasingly often that the law is not the law at all — especially in the broad realm of national security. Will James Clapper, National Intelligence Director, be prosecuted for perjuring himself before congress when he lied about the surveillance program? (Clapper answered elected officials’ questions in the “least untruthful manner” available to him, he cutely said.) How often does rape get prosecuted in the military, and when it does, how often does a conviction stick? Did the US Marine unit that slaughtered 24 civilians, execution-style, in Haditha, Iraq, face any real penalty?

When it comes to leaking classified material, we have plenty of statutes but no uniform rule applied impartially. Not a week goes by without some top-secret material being leaked by a high official to the New York Times or the Washington Post; Obama’s own former chief of staff William Daley bragged about his leaking prowess, while noting he is nothing compared to his predecessor, the “leaker-in-chief” Rahm Emanuel.