Breaking: Bradley Manning Acquitted

Picked this up just now on Twitter.  I'm cheating by re-printing the initial US News/NBCNews report:

Manning acquitted of aiding enemy but convicted on other charges

By Courtney Kube, Katie Wall and Erin McClam, NBC News

fc. Bradley Manning, the former Army intelligence officer who was branded as both a whistle-blower and a traitor after he sent 700,000 secret government documents to WikiLeaks, was xxxxxx.

The verdict was handed down by Col. Denise Lind, the judge at Manning’s court-martial at Fort Meade, Md.

Manning, 25, has said he was disillusioned by an American foreign policy bent on “killing and capturing people” when he released the documents, including battlefield reports and diplomatic cables, in 2010.

In a closing argument at the court-martial, his lawyer, David Coombs, argued that Manning was “trying to ply his knowledge to hopefully save lives,” was young and naïve and thought he could make a difference.

Military prosecutors said Manning was not a whistle-blower but a traitor. They said Manning knew that enemies of the United States use WikiLeaks as a resource, and they said some of the documents he released wound up in the hands of al Qaeda.

The prosecutors said Manning craved notoriety and put his fellow soldiers at risk.

Manning had already pleaded guilty to 10 charges that carry up to 20 years in prison, plus a dishonorable discharge. But prosecutors pushed ahead with more serious counts, including aiding the enemy.

He has been jailed at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since April 2011 and was at the military prison in Quantico, Va., for nine months before that.

Among his defenders is Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 leaked what become known as the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Those papers showed that the government was systematically misleading the public about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

This story was originally published on Tue Jul 30, 2013 1:11 PM EDT

What do you think?

Who Increased the Debt?

Who indeed?

Paul Krugman's  NY Times Op-Ed today focuses on the myth of debt recovery in the past.  

You often hear assertions to the effect that in the past the economy has always rebounded strongly after a recession, so there must be something special at work here — and that something special must be the socialist in the White House.

Yet the reality is that weak recoveries have actually been the norm for the last two decades: both the 1990-1991 recession and the 2001 recession were followed by prolonged “jobless recoveries”.

Take another look at what we're going through and tell me we should be out of danger now two years after the failure of the biggest banks and financial firms in the world as well as the automotive industry.  

Come on people.

Hosed

Hosed  by Cole Scott

Published yesterday by Brian @ Waystation One for his other project on One Stop Poetry, this packs a political punch I can't duplicate...

Eww! What did I step in?

this is not another poem

but a manifesto written

in red lipstick

on the morning after mirrors

of a nation that has forgotten

its identity in drunken debauchery

and the rush of get rich,



quick scams to join the

one percent, drawn on dry

erase boards for fast exits

slowly turning the tourniquet

cutting the flow of blood to

the innocent & amputating the

masses as gangrene populace



who then will you find to

cut your grass & wash your

Aston Martin at minimum

wage?



rage against the machine

that chews the bone to suck

the marrow of the weak, spewing

bullshit rhetoric in excess, exhaust

to choke the few trees left

that haven't been martyrs to the cause

of containing self-egrandizing

laws---



Tocqueville said,

"self-interest properly understood"

was our strength, but butchered

it has been, in two word

short attention

spans



so while you sup on

caviar and crackers at state

dinners kissing the ass of those

you have indebted us to, think of me

for once, as I often think of you

when cleaning off the bottom

of my shoe.



sorry if this hurts your feelings,

i am still just waiting for

change i can believe in.

Balasana  by Cole Scott