Someone always has to play the race card. I think the fact that she is a "Celebrity" B-ball player had a lot more to do with it than her color. She chose to put herself in the public eye by playing professional sports. She further placed herself in the public eye by participating in a divisive issue (kneeling during the anthem). If she wasn't a professional ball player and she didn't kneel for the national anthem, we probably wouldn't have even heard about it regardless of her color. This story wouldn't have even made the front page and she would have just been left to rot in prison without anyone hardly even knowing about it.

There are Americans all over the world in foreign prisons that we'll never hear about. We're just hearing about this one because she's famous and because it's Russia who we are at odds with right now. Leave your race baiting out of it.

She kneeled and did other stuff to protest police brutality of African Americans.

So the issue of race in the US is in this matter.

She is now, however, just a pawn in a political battle involving Putin and his relations with the US.

Britney Griner will protest during the national anthem all season - Outsports

Excellent news! Finally, an unpatriotic US citizen actually not being allowed back to the country she hates for 9 years!

She does not hate this country. And will probably be exchanged within a year.

Her words and actions clearly demonstrate she bitterly hates the USA. Requesting the National Anthem not be played at her games and kneeling when the National Anthem is played are abhorrently anti-American.

Anti-American by whose definition? Some wag on FOX? Someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. would applaud it as being very American.

By her behavior, her own actions and words, of course: If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck...

This might be helpful in assisting one to understand. Your Guide to Deductive, Inductive, and Abductive Reasoning

You sir are correct the way things are today we would not even hear about a white person in this situation it's all about equity now.

Yes, but the "bombs bursting in air" are images of violence. Why does that deserve more respect than "brotherhood from sea to shining sea"?

Today, we honor veterans who allegedly sacrificed themselves for a good cause, but in many cases it was not, but only to support some dictator or genocide, or something awful like defoliating the Vietnam countryside. That is not honorable even if the individual deed is. We need to get off the military kick and become a truly honorable nation who cares about the lives of people and don't simply cast if off as "collateral damage," the military euphemism for civilians killed in combat.

Disagree. If intent was a valid excuse every single drug trafficker in the world would use it.

But I also think she purchased the oil, intended to use it, & intended to take it to Russia with her.

Additionally galling to me is what it will eventually cost hard working tax payers financially to get this America hating individual out of a Russian prison she deserves to remain in for the crime she committed there; sadly, it will no doubt happen. The amount to me is unfathomable and a total waste of taxpayer money. Repatriating her is an oxymoron of course.

She was found guilty because she admitted to it. She then made varying conflicting excuses, but that doesn't change admitting the charge.

I disagree. She likely "takes a knee" to protest racism and race and gender inequality The average woman makes 30% less wages in the same job as a man - a woman does NOT have to be black to protest that fact. America's birth in Colonial times came about by PROTESTS (give me liberty or give me death. Protests are American, NOT unAmerican. The quote is "TOWARD a more perfect union". No country has achieved a perfect union of its citizens - certainly NOT the US.

So, Brittany Griner protested by taking a knee - there are millions of "other Brittanys" that would, also, protest if they had HER platform. And there are millions of white men that would have traveled to Russia to play any sport if they could have made the MONEY that she did. And a few of them would have forgotten something illegal in their suitcase as they tried to board a plane ( every day of the year some guns turn up at a US airport). I imagine that about 75% of those people FORGOT that a gun was in their coat pocket or somewhere in a suitcase.

In general, I find it surprising that there is so much ANIMOSITY toward Brittany. Especially taking Russia's side over a US citizen. Personally, if I were to guess, I would say that the animosity is part of the recent, general lack of cohesion among all the various ethnic groups of the US. And Russia encourages this ! They have learned that UNITED the US stands tall, but DIVIDED the US falls on its collective face !!!!!!!!!

Marc Fogel would likely agree with you. Nothing whatsoever is being done for him and he only had "medical marijuana", not hashish oil.

"An American educator imprisoned in Russia said he feels “hurt” to be overlooked as the Biden administration works to bring Brittney Griner home, arguing that educators “are at least as important” as basketball players.

Marc Hilliard Fogel, 61 — who was arrested last August at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for trying to enter the country with about 20 grams of medical marijuana — worries about his own fate after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed that the US made a “substantial proposal” to bring home Griner and ex-Marine Paul Whelan.

“That hurt. Teachers are at least as important as bballers,” Fogel wrote in a letter sent to his home in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, of the news reports of the possible exchange for convicted “Merchant of Death” Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout."

From: Teacher in Russia prison blasts Biden over Griner

And I think someone put it in her suitcase to get on Putin's good side with the firestorm it would create. Or Putin goons engineered it.