And for those who may not know, Floyd Abrams is a very strong defender of First Amendment:

Important First Amendment Cases
Main article: List of prominent cases argued by Floyd Abrams

Abrams appearance before the Supreme Court as an advocate of the First Amendment has put him in a class of prominent and still-working legal scholars who have shaped American understanding of their fundamental rights under the United States Constitution. In his 2005 book Speaking Freely, he outlines his knowledge of and perspective on these influential cases (listed in the main article above). Abrams said these cases showcase the work that has been done on free speech in the United States.[4] Fellow Supreme Court attorney Lee Levine, in a book review, wrote that "the modern history of the freedom of the press in this country is intimately associated with the career and work of Floyd Abrams." His career matured in the late 1960s, right after the Supreme Court decided New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). He has worked on the Pentagon Papers and Branzburg v. Hayes (1972), to Landmark Communications v. Virginia (1978) and Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co. (1979), to Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart (1976). He has defended numerous clients, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art from Rudolph Giuliani over the Sensation exhibition, NBC from Wayne Newton, and Al Franken from a trademark lawsuit brought by Fox News Channel over the use of the phrase "Fair and Balanced" in the title of his book[5]. He is currently representing five tobacco companies including R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and [[Lorillard Tobacco] in their lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration over graphic warning labels on cigarette packs[6], contending that requiring graphic warning labels on a lawful product cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny.[7] The Association of National Advertisers and the American Advertising Federation have also filed a brief in the suit.[8]

For the wikileaks people... they DON'T believe that there should be any secrets, and they are willing to let people be killed over it to make it painful enough to stop. OTOH, they are idealistic over only certain things but jealously guard what they believe to be theirs. Essentially they don't brook compromise. In the kernal of most of them is anarchy, as a romantic ideal. They wouldn't last 2 seconds in real anarchy though...

This is bullshit, sheeple. Fuck 'em.

Some people woke up this morning still counting on the government to solve their problems. That would be the same government that lost all this data.

Some people are slow learners.

> That would be the same government that lost
> all this data.

All this data that wasn't worth secreting anyway.

I can't believe you people are falling for this.

AMBASSADORS RECALLED!!!!!

NIGHTMARE!!!! APOCALYPSE!!!

Goddammit, we need to give our government the money and authority it wants and then stay out of the way....

I'm all for information being as widely disseminated as possible. But we're not just talking about ambassadors being recalled here. Some of the people exposed in this have their lives at risk. The vast majority is most likely innocuous, but it only takes a few that name names to be a problem.

The consequence, of course, is that people with useful information simply won't take the risk of passing it on. Well done, Wikileaks.

What if they got their hands on the witness protection program records and published that? From a practical standpoint, that program exists so that people will testify rather than clam up. It was never about being nice or morality. Sometimes there are good reasons for secrecy.

dunno Crid, aren't the names of people on the ground that pass us info worth something? I dun' care about some snooty ambassador who thinks the prime minister's wife stinks here...

I'm talking about ratting out intelligence assets...

Yeah, but as far as crid is concerend people getting murdered for testifying or helping the US bring peace to their nation is less important then whether or not little Timmy learns how not to get his girlfreind pregnant - thats whats really important

> Some of the people exposed in this have their
> lives at risk.

[1.] Very, very, very few. Furthermore, most are professionals in international affairs (or their contacts) who –while they might have hoped for the best possible outcome for their service- should have understood that a risk was being taken. (See also #3, below.)

[2.] At no time did I –as the taxpayer and citizen in whose name these gambles have been taken– sign off on this behavior, either as a moral project for government or as a worthwhile risk on the verge of morality. And that's the point!: I didn't have the opportunity to sign on off it. These people took my money and secretly used it to dance their way through their Sean Connery Chest Hair daydreams of secret agency.

[3.] The life-endangering exposures from these emails represent merely a thinly whispering fraction of the sum total of the materials classified, the entire weight of which is bring brought to bear in the inexcusably fascist imprisonment-without-charges of Manning and comically senseless legal pursuit of Assange in shabby international courts.

Got that? The howling majority of this material was mundane, or so tepidly offensive that righteous nation would have no problem saying it out loud anyway. Thousands of incompetent yet powerful careers were nourished with the toxic pretense that these things deserved to be secret.

> It only takes a few that name names
> to be a problem.

Oh, fuck all. "A problem." Is your appreciation of world affairs that constrained, that diminished? Maybe it is! You wouldn't be alone:

> I'm talking about ratting out
> intelligence assets...

Guys, this word: PROPORTION.

Thousands of people are going to be disappointed by the United States TODAY! By our government, our business people, and our freedom-loving citizens... Because of things we do, and because of things we don't do, and in both cases because we promised them that events would go the other way. It's a huge fucking planet, and we're the best! So everyone counts on us for everything, and things will go wrong. Lives, livelihoods, and other treasures will be lost.

We should feel bad.

If you want to start worrying about people who we've promised will be safe if they trust us, these little memoranda are a really WEIRD place for you to start. When we're surreptitiously dropping little packets of death on people all over the globe, you're apparently eager to nourish a very silly fantasy about yourself... Specifically, that you're the only one who remembers that people get hurt when trust isn't rewarded...

And a fantasy that —this is the insane part— if cutting yourself and every other voter out of the information stream which could alert you to this villainy can prevent JUST ONE of those deaths, then doggone it, you're ready to make that trade...!

'Cept, I think your posture is mostly about feigning virginity after a long night in the whorehouse.

Do not do this with my taxpayer money, and do not do it with my moral righteousness. You are not that bright. You are not that decent. And for the love of a cocksucking Christ in Hell, neither is our government.

God Bless Assange. He's like David Bowie with talent.

They're idiots, and you shouldn't pay their bills or bear the burden of their lies.