Of course, one could say that this is why you should have been minding your own business. But, I would have probably done the same thing you did…I try to be nice and helpful before keeping myself out of trouble, and I probably should work on this some more…cause it isn’t doing me any good at all at this point in my life.

It’s more like, Bobby doesn’t have a money problem, but he’s cross-eyed… He knows he’s cross-eyed, you know he’s cross-eyed, but you just don’t talk about it with him. Sure it’ll hurt his feelings when you introduce him to Sam as your cross-eyed friend Bobby, but he’ll get over it. Eventually.

Her comment was this –

Thanks for recapping the major arguments being put forth in strong opposition to WikiLeaks’ recent information dumps. These are all good points and I won’t discount them. But I offer some counter arguments.

1. The leaks have resulted in no loss of life and no outing of US secret agents (at least, so far). The same cannot be said of the administration of Presidents Bush and Obama who have brought us the outrage against CIA agent Valerie Plame and wars in two countries. So I am not fully persuaded by dire warnings and hand wringing coming from government defenders such as Secretary Clinton.

I think WikiLeaks has made mistakes in not editing out all the names of people put into danger that it might have. But certainly the organization tried to do this right (sending material to the world’s most esteemed media outlets for vetting, changing policies in the face of criticism). And while there has been lots of yelling about giving away US military positions — that has not really happened and no one argues it should.

2. Do you really believe one Army private found and gave away all the thousands of secret documents we are talking about here? I have trouble with that idea but if it is true, the leak has exposed a terribly deficient system of document keeping that needs to be fixed. The leaker or leakers may indeed be guilty of treason or illegal activity, but since WikiLeaks did not engage in theft or encourage it according to any information so far available, there is nothing to stand in the way of the organization publishing it that I can think of. This has certainly long been the practice upheld by courts for American media.

3. I am suspicious of the rape charges against Assange. I certainly favor harsh punishment for rape, but the timing of these allegations and the way he is being so rigorously sought suggest there are other issues besides violated women on the authorities’ minds.

4. Publicizing the cables could indeed change how business between nations is done, but I wonder if that is necessarily so bad. The mafiazation of the Russian government, the nuclear capability of Iran, the need for change in the Koreans, all highlighted in the cables, are matters that need attention from the American government and from us. Definitely this affects the common folk. Maybe we could talk about some of this in the midst of all the hue and cry occupying us about TSA pat downs and gay soldiers.

5. Assange has from Day 1 championed real transparency. That is his mission, I think, not hurting the US. He definitely doesn’t mind if that happens, but he has been consistent in his idea, a good one, that democracies open information about its inner workings to the people — who ARE the government.

Didn’t mean to put such a long thing out there, but I came across her post, especially her comment on the post and I agree with just about everything she had to say.

I agree, 100%.

I don’t see this as anything other than treason by the American that gave him these documents and espionage by Assange for releasing secret state documents to the world.

The freedom of speech defense doesn’t sit right with me either, it’s the diplomats freedom of speech that should be protected here, keeping what exchanged between them secret. In my opinion Assange is a traitor the whole world and every country mention in those documents should try him for espionage.