There have been a lot of attempts at false equivalencies (the last Republican Vice Presidential candidate of the United States is exactly the same as a random Daily Kos diarist) and a lot of attempts to explain away incendiary political rhetoric with a wave of the hand and something like “both sides do it.” But the responses above on their own refute this. They resort to the pretty common rhetoric of demonization to make their points. I have no interest in censoring their speech, but I sure want to highlight it.

If a memo instituting new security reviews, explicitly written in response to WikiLeaks, institutes a policy of reviewing contacts with the media, doesn’t that suggest they consider WikiLeaks to be media?

I don’t see how any person–much less a constitutional lawyer–can claim that US efforts to get other democracies to set aside rule of law in their countries to help the US avoid responsibility for its crimes is not an abuse of power. And yet somehow Floyd Abrams suggests just that — that revealing the US’ double standards about rule of law, all in the service of avoiding any accountability for torture, does not constitute a valuable revelation.

Private Manning has never been tried for a crime. He has never been convicted of a crime. Yet he has spent the past five months in solitary confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, VA, and the preceding two months in prison in Kuwait. Call or email the White House if you think this is just plain wrong, just plain ugly, and just plain inhumane. Call the White House at 202-456-1111, or email the President at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact to register your protest against this inhumane treatment.

AT&T and Verizon are now blocking Wikileaks sites internally, too. Maybe we can just find out who is spying for the government based on which companies implement these kinds of blocks on Wikileaks?

Now comes the bellicose fixation of the United States government on criminally prosecuting WikiLeak’s editor-in-chief Julian Assange. What started out as the usual idiotic yammering of Rep. Peter King and Sen. Joe Lieberman has turned into an apparently dedicated and determined effort by the Department of Justice to charge Assange. As the following discussion will demonstrate, it will require dicey and novel extrapolation of legal theories and statutes to even charge Assange, much less actually convict him.

This is not just a destructive and myopic scheme to effect prior restraint in a digital world, it is laughable from the point of legal foundation.

If you support Wikileaks, if you support transparency, accountability, or even just basic free speech, you should not be playing into the government’s semantic game that presents itself as a victim, and Wikileaks as an attacker. As someone who engages in journalism, as someone who engages in activism and dissent, I don’t want these things re-defined as an attack on the state.

I am not an insurgent, and neither are you. Until we realize that, until we understand the difference between journalism and war, then the government will continue to claim it’s acting in self defense.

Stop giving the government an excuse for repression. Stop calling Wikileaks “warfare”.

New York Times editor Bill Keller, explains how his organization checked with the US government before publishing any of the Wikileaks State Department cables, redacted all sensitive names from publication at the recommendation of the government, and basically did everything they could in advance to clear the release with the Administration. Carne Ross, the British Ambassador, “found it extraordinary” that the NYT would clear their releases with the US government.

And now, for their trouble, the Times has put themselves in the crosshairs of Joe Lieberman, the head of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Joe Lieberman has introduced what he claims to be a law targeted at WikiLeaks. Problem is, not only would it not endanger WikiLeaks (as far as we know), but it would put both good and bad journalists in jail.

According to the Fifth Circuit, Bobby Knight was too progressive, you couldn’t just infamously “lie back and enjoy” your rape, you have to actively cheer about it.