Move over Joe Hill, Tom Mooney, and Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Left has a new folk hero in Bradley Manning, the Army private who transferred his country's secrets to a clique of Euro-based America haters. As my article @ FrontPageMag details, Bradley Manning is just the latest in a long line of goats America haters have confused for heroes.

John Kass, a columnist at the Chicago Tribune, had something to say on this, but from a different perspective:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-1209-20101209,0,5725693.column

The money quote starts at paragraph 12, where he describes what will be done with the stuff Wikileaks has revealed.

Democrats finally have a new enemy besides the Republicans. Maybe? Right now they are kind of upset with Obama cause he threw them under the bus.

If you want a new book to read about Americans actually taking a stand against tyranny then read this one. I recommend it cause it's not a 'conspiracy theory' but real events.

www.booksbyoliver.com

Obama is in great trouble & the democrats are lost without any other leader.

Nice link Daniel.

Kass sums up what a lot of us have said here in the comments section, only much more eloquently.

Some will say that it's just a thought experiment and in the abstract but their just salving their conscience.

Sorry..."they're."

I can't think of a decent argument to refute anything that Rep. Paul argues in this speech. While I find his market fundamentalism to be insane, he is at least a consistent market fundamentalist. When it comes to civil liberties, he is 100% correct regarding Mr. Assange. Rep. Paul has self-respect and respect for facts and logic, and I have to pay respect for that when it's due.

WikiLeaks House Floor Speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDp1izlMQT0

Quote from speech's conclusion:

Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised 'Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.' I yield back the balance of my time.

Putin has now condemned the imprisonment of Assange, as reported on the Drudge. This illustrates an extremely important secondary reason why the imprisonment of Assange is irrational: authoritarian regimes will use this as a classic two-wrongs-make-a-right rhetorical bludgeon to attack the United States and people who advocate for greater speech rights in places like Russia and China.

1. The People don't have a right to know everything. There are necessary secrets.
2. The question has already been asked and is being dealt with.
3. The government was a victim of theft, Assange had a choice of whether to publish the info and he chose to, not inspite of the damage it might cause the U.S., but BECAUSE it would hurt us.
4. Exactly who out there who has read the documents is qualified to make that determination? You? Me? Some newscaster?
5. Pentagon Papers,irrelevent to the topic and for the rest one has to buy into the premise of the question, which I don't.
6. He published secret documents, the first amendment is not an absolute.
7. No it's not.
8. First, Assange is not a U.S. citizen so he couldn't be charged with treason. Second, like number five you have to buy into the premise which is BS.
9. Once again Assange is not a U.S. citizen, in fact he hates the U.S. so there's nothing patriotic about what he did. Second, just because you think something's wrong doesn't mean it is and there are other ways of fighting a government you think is wrong that don't include endangering an entire country.

Who gives a rat's a@# what Putin or any two bit dictator thinks or says, they'll do what they want regardless.

Opus,

Can you give supporting evidence for your claim that the cables WikiLeaks released endangers the entire country? Or is this Glenn Beckerhead Tea Bag speculative filth?

PMA

You're posts might carry a little more heft and you might be taken a little more seriously if you didn't result to name calling you old poopy pants.

However, I don't have cable and I work during the day so I neither watch or listen to Beck,Rush or Hannity and I don't belong to any political party. But I am a conservative.

1.Making public the private conversations and negotiations between us and other countries erodes their trust and will stop them from sharing info and less willing to trust us.
2.It tells our enemies not only the direction we are thinking but what we are thinking.
3.They divulge some of our methods for gathering intel.

I'll go with those three. Hurting private relations with other countries,telling what and how we're thinking and finally how we gather info.

One last thing on Wikileaks and Assange. By attempting to hold the U.S. hostage,threatening to release even more damaging info if he is stopped and punished, makes him no different than any terrorist who threatens mass destruction if their demands are not met.

It's the way of the pissed off lunatic left. When they are losing (which they always eventually do) because their ideology is warped, they resort to class warfare and name calling. Saul Alinsky lives.

asdf wrote,

It's the way of the pissed off lunatic left. When they are losing (which they always eventually do) because their ideology is warped, they resort to class warfare and name calling. Saul Alinsky lives.

I wish the irony of this isn't lost on asdf, because it's awesome.

Opus wrote,

1.Making public the private conversations and negotiations between us and other countries erodes their trust and will stop them from sharing info and less willing to trust us.
2.It tells our enemies not only the direction we are thinking but what we are thinking.
3.They divulge some of our methods for gathering intel.

Good points. I don't think countries, however, negotiate with us because they trust us, although they may hope and trust that communication is kept private. Robert Gates has already said that this type of damage to U.S. diplomacy is minimal at most. Here's a quote,

Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. And I dragged this up the other day when I was looking at some of these prospective releases. And this is a quote from John Adams: “How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me, it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel."

Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think -- I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets.

So, from the leaks we have now learned that the U.S. government has lied about a considerable number of foreign policies and anti-terrorism strategies. Refer back to Rep. Paul's questions.

Regarding the last two numbered points, do you have any particular examples where this is a problem? Because the United States is a democratic republic, the public has a right to know what we're doing and why we're doing it. As far as I'm aware, no military tactics were released within the diplomatic cables.

When the names of Afghan sources were leaked, that was a tragedy and the result of WikiLeaks' recklessness. Fortunately, no lives have been lost as a result and I haven't heard an argument that uses concrete, particular examples that illustrates how this damages our fight against terrorism in Afghanistan. In fact, our mere presence in Afghanistan inspires and foments terrorism, creating more terrorists than it defeats, which has been proven by the Pentagon, CIA, and various think tanks using empirical, irrefutable data.

"I wish the irony of this isn't lost on asdf, because it's awesome."

Amen... the king of mindless fanaticism strikes again with some more injected talking points he was fed from the 'leftist media'.

"5. Pentagon Papers,irrelevent to the topic and for the rest one has to buy into the premise of the question, which I don't."

This is a very relevant question when the major attacks against wikileaks feign ignorance on the scope of damage done by lying to our country and by releasing information.

"6. He published secret documents, the first amendment is not an absolute."

When there is an utter failure of our 'Freedom of Information' Act, and no one to watch over big brother, who is ever to say what "1. The People don't have a right to know everything. There are necessary secrets. " Our constitution defines government as "We the people", and we have not been living as such for quite some time.

Transparency is a beautiful thing, even when it hurts in the moment.