People v. State

COMPARE Glenn Greenwald’s July 4th post on the motives of Bradley Manning with Bryan J. Brown’s “July 4th Primer — to the Indiana Supreme Court,” consisting of his final filing with that court in his unsuccessful bid to be admitted by them to the practice of law in Indiana. (Background on Bryan’s case is here, here, and here.)

CONTRAST Jeff Gamso’s July 4th post contrasting the relative “necessity” of dissolving political bands in 1776 and now with Norm Pattis’ July 4th post contrasting the trial in 1770 of the British soldiers charged with murder for their role in the Boston Massacre with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2011 in the case of Harry Connick, District Attorney v. John Thompson (throwing out a $14 million jury award for an innocent man who was imprisoned for 18 years, including 14 on death row, because prosecutors hid evidence that exonerated him).

One of my favorite blogs has apparently died.

I’m proud to be Belgian (i.e., one-quarter Belgian, through my maternal grandfather, who fought in WWII and received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He died when I was seven or eight. According to family members he was a very different man after the war than he was before.)

Three genuine war heroes: Smedley Butler, Hugh Thompson, and Bradley Manning.

“We’re All Victims of the System”

“Buy a gun. Get a dog.” And close down all the prisons. The world would be a better and safer place.

Is there anything more obscene than Westboro Baptist Church’s picketing of dead soldiers’ funerals? Yes, there is indeed something far more obscene: the U.S. military’s God-damned torture and charging with a capital offense of the only American soldier in recent memory who has actually fought and suffered for the freedom of Americans, PFC Bradley Manning. In this new age of involuntary transparency brought on by Wikileaks, Obama’s Administration apparently has decided to respond with less secrecy and more Terrorism, and presumably views the “bad” publicity associated with Manning’s treatment and comparisons with Abu Ghraib and Gitmo as a feature and not a bug. Obama is a contemptible hypocrite. Manning is a hero. They have their reward.

See:

The Truth Behind Quantico Brig’s Decision to Strip PFC Manning, by his lawyer David E. Coombs

Manning Prosecutors: The Enemy is Us, by Thomas L. Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society

Sailors take aim at new recruiting slogan, by Philip Ewing at the Navy Times

I have a confession to make. One of my early posts on this blog was ripped off in its entirety from an article by Thomas Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS). In my defense, his article was titled “Steal This Column.” Also in my defense, the C4SS encourages such wanton theft:

Take our content, please!

All content on this site is available for republishing under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license.

We want you to copy and distribute this stuff as widely as possible. That’s what we’re here for!

You don’t have to ask our permission. That’s what the Creative Commons licensing is for. Everybody has permission already. Just do it.

If you want to be nice, you can include a link back to us, but the only requirement is to provide attribution to the author and C4SS.

Because the authors at the C4SS so often say things I wish I’d said, I plan to take them up on their offer and steal their content more often. And I couldn’t begin my thievery with a better article than the one posted today by Kevin Carson and copied and pasted in its entirety below by me:

Bradley Manning: One Soldier Who Really Did “Defend Our Freedom”

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