An editorial in today's New York Times correctly faults Speaker Boehner and Senator Feinstein for characterizing Edward Snowden, the source of the Guardian and Washington Post articles about secret U.S. government data collection programs, as a traitor. The editorial says:
In the landmark 1945 case Cramer v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that one had to provide aid and comfort and also "adhere" to an enemy to be guilty of treason.
"A citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy," the court said, "making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength — but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason."
This is a strange formulation. If the Times editorial writers are looking for a definition of treason, they need not look exclusively to that Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court, after all, did not invent the definition out of thin air. It comes from the Constitution, in Article III, Section 3, which states:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court
The Times article doesn't mention the Constitution at all, which is an odd omission, because treason is the only crime whose definition is given explicitly in the text of the Constitution. Maybe the editorial writer was unaware of this passage, or maybe it's a sign of the skewed way the Times views the law in this country, which is that it comes from the Supreme Court rather than from the Constitution.