WikiLeaks Founder Will Not Be Leaking Info About His Personal Life

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walked out of an interview with CNN in London.
Assange, who was being interviewed to discuss the 400,000 pages of documents WikiLeaks released about the Iraq War, grew upset when interviewer Atika Shubert asked about his personal legal issues. Assange was investigated in Sweden on charges of sexual abuse that were then dropped, but the investigation was re-opened shortly thereafter.
"This interview is about something else," Assange told Shubert. "I'm going to walk if you're going to contaminate us revealing the deaths of 104,000 people with attacks against my person."
Assange repeatedly threatened to walk off, calling Shubert's questions about his personal life "completely disgusting."
As Shubert persisted, Assange apologized, removed his mic and walked off the set. -Huffington Post

In my opinion, Julian Assange did the right thing in this situation. He was being personally attacked during an interview that was supposed to be centered on much more important issues. Those issues, including our nation’s safety and the preservation of The Constitution’s “right to free speech”, are important to America and all its citizens. Assange’s personal life is not what this interview was supposed to be about or what it should be about. This story leads back to the issue of soft news vs. hard news. This reporter was trying to turn this interview into an episode of Entertainment Tonight and in doing so was avoiding the real issues at hand. Her “tough” questions ought to be about the reasoning and logic behind the releasing of potentially life-threatening and dangerous documents to the world, not questions about his inner-office relationships and character flaws. Please save that stuff for The View and stick to your guns CNN.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/23/julian-assange-walks-out-_n_772837.html

The Lesser of Two Evils: The Georgia Governor’s Race

After Nathan Deal won the Republican primary just two months ago, anyone would have thought he had the governor’s race in the bag. He had overcome his biggest hurdle, Karen Handel, and with a win of less than one percent of the vote, gotten very lucky. His luck stopped there though and only a couple of weeks after the win it came out that he has about five million dollars of debt that he left off the disclosure forms. This comes after the fact that he was already involved in an Office of Congressional Ethics investigation, regarding reports that he was pressuring Georgia officials to keep a state vehicle inspection program that benefited his automobile salvage company. This is the same automobile salvage company that he has an unpaid $2.5 million dollar loan out on.  Now the whole race has been turned on its head and is becoming a race about choosing the lesser of two evils. No one thought Roy Barnes had a chance in hell and now he is only trailing Deal by about 4 points. The press has christened the race, “King Roy vs. Shady Deal.” Whilst giving Deal the titles of, “one of the fifteen most corrupt members of Congress” and “Georgia’s Christine O’Donnell.”

Both sides are now engaged in a pretty nasty ad war. Deal has been trying to put Barnes in the same boat as Obama and has his friend Dale Peterson, the former candidate for the Alabama agriculture Commissioner, helping him out. Peterson claims in one TV ad that Barnes sounds like the president when he is going around apologizing for all his past mistakes as former governor. Barnes, on the other hand, has ads calling Deal, “as slippery as a bag of snakes” and too corrupt even for Congress. Barnes claims in one ad that he requires no on the job training, while Deal is trying to make Barnes’ former governorship seem like a nightmare. Both are mudslinging like nobody’s business and making national headlines while doing so. Everyone from the New York Times to the Associated Press is watching this election very closely.

Does Deal deserve this large of a backlash for his financial woes? Well it all depends on who you talk to. The Republican’s are saying that the recession is to blame for his losses and that these financial hardships are only making Deal more sympathetic to business owners who are going through the same things in these tough times. He was just a father trying to help his child out like any parent would. While the Democrat’s are using the argument that if his personal finances are so bad then there is no way he can run the state’s finances and if he is lying about personal finances then what else could he be lying about. A good parent might pay for a child’s college tuition, not sign for a $2 million dollar loan. The Democrat’s seem pretty confident in their argument though, since the Democratic Governor’s Association just poured $1 million into Barnes’s campaign.

This is a time when the Republican’s should easily be sweeping elections and filling offices. Especially in a red state like Georgia, and yet Deal has still managed to put the governorship in question. I am sure that the Republican’s are kicking themselves in the behind now for not electing Karen Handel in the primaries. This race could have been a cake walk for them if she had won the vote. Sure, you cannot go back and change what happened but when you are involved in a race that should be as easily won as this one, maybe you should go with a safe candidate instead of one who was already involved in an ethics investigation.  Deal was just a ticking time bomb. Democrats are the party in control and the country is in a recession with the president’s approval rating on a downward spiral and the unemployment rate at 9.5%. Yet, the Republican’s STILL cannot secure the governor’s race in a RED state. That is just embarrassing.

This is going to be an interesting race to watch and I know I will definitely be at the polls on November 2^nd to cast my ballot. I honestly do not know who will come out the winner. Will more scandals be unearthed before Election Day? Nothing would surprise me at this point…. The winner is going to come from who can get the 13% of undecided voters to side with them. As I said before, I think that a lot of people, including the undecided voters, feel that this race is about choosing the lesser of two evils. Go ahead and pick your poison, Georgia.

http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/ad-war-in-georgia-594812.html

Vs.

Free Liu Xiaobo!

OSLO (AP) — Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for using non-violence to demand fundamental human rights in his homeland. The award ignited a furious response from China, which accused the Norwegian Nobel Committee of violating its own principles by honoring "a criminal."

Chinese state media immediately blacked out the news and Chinese government censors blocked Nobel Prize reports from Internet websites.

The people of China cannot even celebrate Liu Xiaobo’s great achievement today…. because they don’t even know about it! His name has been expunged from all forms of media. The so-called "Great Firewall" that the Chinese Government has created is being used in full force to censor any searches involving the “Nobel Peace Prize” or “Liu Xiaobo”.

Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace Prize because of his brave fighting for democracy and human rights in China and is being praised as a hero by many. Yet, China put him in jail for this very behavior. It is all pretty insane to think of here in America, but there are plenty of people who would rot away in jail to get the kinds of freedoms that we take for granted on a daily basis.

These are the exact types of media controls and regulations that the U.S., as a democratic society, is so fortunate to not have to deal with. When we talk about things like the Fairness Doctrine and news channels being required to promote good citizenship in our class lectures and debates, this is the perfect example of just how bad things could get if we started down any of those slippery slopes. This is definitely not the first time China has used this type of censorship, Google anyone? This, however, is just another example of why we need to strive to keep our media free and keep the government’s hands out of our news! Long live the First Amendment and the right to free speech!

America, are you mad as Hell?

WASHINGTON- The number of voters who cast early ballots in this year's primary elections increased 50% over the 2006 midterm, a USA TODAY review of key states shows, the latest uptick in a trend that is reshaping political campaigns.

Nearly 6 million people took part in early voting during this year's primary elections in the 13 states reviewed, including California, Florida and Texas. That's up from just over 4 million voters in those same states during the 2006 primary election.

Does this mean that American’s are all of a sudden more concerned with politics than they were two years ago? Maybe….but probably not. It is still good news nonetheless. Most likely this large change is the effect of states making it easier to cast early ballots.  

However, it is also well known that when times are good, citizens tend to be content with “politics as usual” and are less likely to cast a ballot. We are in a recession with millions of people out of work…people want and need a change. People’s livelihoods are at stake. People have a lot more of a reason to turn off the TV and make their voice heard in this election.
I am proud of Americans for standing up and fighting for a change. Grassroots movements like the Tea Party are amazing to see even if I do not necessarily agree with what they stand for. We are a nation built by the people, for the people and its time we start showing it. As I am typing this all I can think of is the Howard Beale’s “I’m mad as Hell” speech.
"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" You tell them America!