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I'm sure there are some people here who mindlessly revile Assange, but he initially sounded like a reasonable guy. A particular problem now is to try to separate the dislike for a distasteful guy from the issue of First Amendment Rights.
More Than a Data Dump
Why Julian Assange deserves First Amendment protection
By James C. Goodale
If he explicitly agreed to act as a Russian agent, he should lose his First Amendment protection. On the other hand, if he did no more than what he did with Manning—receive the documents and publish them—he should have that protection.
If I were POTUS, I would immediately pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. While neither is pure as the driven snow, these are people who exposed corruption in the USA and elsewhere. The people deserve to know when their governments are up to no good.
On second thought, if a Communist, John Brennan, was appointed head of the CIA, by a president that was a Consult of Louis Farrakhan and Reverand Wright, let the information fly
What makes these two people so high and mighty that they should determine what hacked top secret information is released to the world at large?
Snowden provided evidence that our government was spying on everyone, Americans included. That is a direct violation of the 4th Amendment. After all the noise made over right to privacy for things like abortion, apparently we don't actually have plain ole right to privacy. Assange has likewise let us know time and time and time and again when our governments were rotten to the core.
And how do we thank the people who let us know about all that? Toss em in prison if you can. Leave them in permanent exile if you must. We should be thanking them.
Out of curiosity, can you please point out where in the US Constitution it spells out the importance and necessity for our government to keep things secret and hidden from its citizens?
If I were POTUS, I would immediately pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. While neither is pure as the driven snow, these are people who exposed corruption in the USA and elsewhere. The people deserve to know when their governments are up to no good.
I would particularly pardon Snowden, and get him out of Russia, where he was accidentally trapped en route to safety.
And I have to say, compared to Assange, Snowden is pretty much pure as the driven snow. For one thing, he has none of Assange's self-aggrandizing lust for publicity.
here was the latest test case....
quote:
It is almost a canon of First Amendment constitutional law that it is only by protecting unpopular speech of little obvious value that we can we guard
against the possibility of punishing the mere expression of ideas or chilling the expression of speech that the government has no business barring.
case over-view: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgo...rst-amendment/
final: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonis_v._United_States
Assange's claim to being a journalist which would shield him from prosecution for publication is questionable at best but that is not what he is being prosecuted for. Assange is being accused of aiding and abetting Manning, specifically providing him information on how to circumvent security measures that prevented Manning from obtaining more documents. He cannot hide behind the journalist shield when committing crimes.
If I were POTUS, I would immediately pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. While neither is pure as the driven snow, these are people who exposed corruption in the USA and elsewhere. The people deserve to know when their governments are up to no good.
Unfortunately, the current POTUS is working hard to destroy freedom of the press, and freedom of religion has been in the gun sights of the religious right for decades.
They would love to get rid of that pesky Constitution, so they could do what they want.
Assange's claim to being a journalist which would shield him from prosecution for publication is questionable at best but that is not what he is being prosecuted for. Assange is being accused of aiding and abetting Manning, specifically providing him information on how to circumvent security measures that prevented Manning from obtaining more documents. He cannot hide behind the journalist shield when committing crimes.
And the Government can't hide from the war crimes they committed as Manning revealed.
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