If they are fakes planted by those godless Russkies?

I'm going straight into my bedroom and tearing off my mattress tag that says "Do Not Remove Under Penalty Of Law". Then I'm reading every page of WikiLeaks.

Thank you for mentioning this absurd announcement here.

Wikileaks' publication of the Manning materials (video and State Dept cables, 2010-11) brought a severe and over-wrought reaction from the Democratic Administration. This included action by American government officials that managed to take Wikileaks offline and cut off its donation/banking connections. Fast action by citizens of numerous countries put Wikileaks back online immediately, while huge numbers of people worldwide duplicated all or Wikileaks' saved information and created 'mirror sites', while creating alternate systems for donations.

The Democratic Administration -- particularly the DOD, iirc -- tried to extend the Espionage Act to every person in America (and Americans overseas) by proclaiming that the Wikileaks publications were protected by the Act because the information was 'secret' and 'confidential'; therefore anyone who accessed those publications, or allowed themselves to be exposed to reporting on it, were in illegal possession of confidential government documents.

Public outcry demanded immediate retraction of this position as applied widely to all Americans, but the government insisted on maintaining the proscription on anyone associated with/paid by the government. This led to many absurdities, since the Wikileaks publications -- and government reactions to them -- were were being reported 24/7 on all forms of media, so 'forbidden' information was everywhere in the public sphere, including the running headlines on silenced TVs (as I saw in my local laundromat).

Some of the absurdities of this time were: Employees in a variety of government offices whose responsibilities included responding to reporters or writing reports for superiors could not do their jobs without violating the decree. Students in military colleges -- whose upper-level classes included interdisciplinary work requiring them to include 'current events' were unable to do their classwork, which would lower their grades and cause them to suffer career damage (iirc, it was their protests that lead to the decree being weakened or withdrawn).

Since this proclamation seemed to me to be an egregious violation of the First Amendment, I delved into a study of the First Amendment, the Espionage Act, Supreme Court decisions around how this issue had been handled in the past (both WW1 and WW2). (Regrettably, a nasty virus in Spring 2011 destroyed the hard drive containing my research, so I am working from memory and can't provide links or titles; my apologies.)

A number of Supreme Court decisions established these central points: (1) Maintaining the protection of confidential government documents is the responsibility of the *government*, and cannot pro-actively limit the public's First Amendment rights (the abject failure of government -- especially DOD -- to establish adequate cyber-protections as required by the Espionage Act and the relevant Executive Orders was a big subject for discussion in the 2010-11 timeframe). (2) Once government protections of documents fail, so that the documents come into public hands, those documents can be published, and that publication (and the act of publishing) is protected under the First Amendment. (3) Government has no right to define 'real journalist/journalism' or 'real publisher/publication'; to define 'real journalist/journalism' would necessarily limit the exercise of the First Amendment and pre-emptively restrain Free Speech and Freedom of the Press.

The Supreme Court decision on which I based number (3) above pointedly stated that Freedom of the Press did not apply only to established forms of media; those same protected freedoms extended 'even to the lonely pamphleteer' who might stand on a street corner asking passers-by to take a copy, please.

Thus the Supreme Court, in a number of consistent decision over decades, established a 'settled law' position that 'Published information is public information'. Therefore -- no matter what government officials or a random newscaster might proclaim, any limitation of the public's ability to access published information violates the First Amendment.

Published information is public information.

because you did the unthinkable and read and reported about Wikileaks.

Forget the shit. Ain't worth it.

Governor of NY Andy Boy, the tough-talking campaigner as AG who like mentor $hillary knows the first thing to master in politics is a public and private face, is the product of good ole nepotism.

How many other weasels get jobs as "journalists" because of their ties to money and power. Little Tucker Carlson comes to mind too, heir of the Swanson TV dinner folks. I'm sure there's plenty more...

What galls me most is having become acquainted with so many white-hot brilliant and cogent minds through Occupy, who would run rings around these odious corporate clowns, whose understanding of the issues, history, philosophy and poli/sci would embarrass these ugly frauds.

But of course that's just it. These "news" outlets are not in business to inform or educate. They're in business, which is the operative word for CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, et al, to make money. The noble and grave responsibility of the idea of the Fourth Estate has been laughed at of the corporate boardrooms and kicked to the gutter where it currently resides, alongside the vast majority of the unwashed citizenry comprising most of the American middle and working class.

Only one wish I have, seriously. For the entire world to turn off all their corporate tv, stop buying the newspapers and shut off the corporate radio stations (and to stop the relentless, blinding consumerism, stop buying corporate products and food). Then we might get somewhere. What's the Mark Twain quote? "If you don't read newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read newspapers you're misinformed."

Anybody see the trailer for this "All Governments Lie"?

For some reason all of a sudden I'm having trouble embedding YouTube videos. (More on I.F. Stone here)

Because this has happened -at the same time RT is having financial difficulties with British banks- tells me that Hillary's campaign is afraid that the revelations are going to cause problems with Her Coronation. They aren't about to leave loose ends unsecured, even though Trump is in a slump from which he isn't likely to recover without assistance from anyone. It's still too close for Her comfort.

With such poor approval numbers for both of them, the right combination of hits on Her from Wikileaks could just make the difference, especially if enough people bolt from the control of the major parties for the Greens and Libertarians. The last thing Her Campaign wants is to hand the decision to Paul Ryan, who will never let Her win.