Give credit to Jake Tapper, senior White House correspondent for ABC News, who in a press conference challenged the Obama Administration for celebrating aggressive journalists that have died in Syria as it simultaneously goes after similar journalism in the United States.

Pfc. Bradley Manning, a US soldier accused of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, is to be arraigned today at Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning will be given “official notice of the charges,” according to his defense lawyer, David Coombs. He will then be asked to enter a plea.

On Coombs’ Army Court Martial Defense blog, Coombs writes, “This is the first step in the court-martial process.” It is scheduled to begin at 1 pm EST this afternoon.

Pfc. Bradley Manning’s Article 32 hearing, also being referred to as his pre-trial hearing, will begin on December 16 at Ft. Meade, Maryland. The hearing could potentially last until Friday, December 23.

An Article 32 hearing, according to the Defense Department, is “closely akin to the civilian grand jury investigation.” When the hearing closes, the “Article 32 officer” will make “a recommendation” on “the disposition of the charges.” Or, as David Dishneau of AP clearly and concisely puts it, “The proceeding is to determine whether the Army intelligence analyst will be court-martialed for allegedly leaking government secrets.”

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed published today, J. William Leonard, who worked for five years as the director of the Information Security Oversight Information Office when George W. Bush was president, calls on the Obama administration to sanction “those who inappropriately classify information, and it needs to take far greater care in what it decides to label secret.”

More than a thousand government organizations and nearly two thousand private companies currently work counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence programs. Well over two million Defense Department civilian, military and contractor personnel hold confidential, secret and top secret level security clearances. At the same time, the US government engages in a gross amount of classification of information, significantly limiting what citizens are allowed to know about the operations of government and effectively shielding routine abuses of power from scrutiny and outrage.

On Wednesday, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona renewed his push for the creation of a temporary Senate committee to investigate WikiLeaks and the hacktivist group Anonymous that would be called the Committee on Cyber Security and Electronic Intelligence Leaks.

Sadly the actions of one person are being used to cast aspersions on the entire Wikileaks organization. CNN is the latest to conflate the man who started the work and the organization itself.

The Manning Support Network’s focus will now be on ensuring his trial is not secret. They believe the public has a right to decide for themselves based on evidence presented whether he is guilty or not, as the trial unfolds.

David Allen Green, legal correspondent for the New Statesman out of the UK, has spent the last few days calling attention to a leaked WikiLeaks confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement (NDA), which he revealed in a blog post on May 11. Green has posted a second post on the agreement on his blog, Jack of Kent, and will be posting a summary to the New Statesmanwebsite on May 16, which last time I checked, he intends to glibly title, “NDAs for Dummies.”

Christine O’Donnell – terrified about turning Chinese.