More WikiLeakage

Now that I've had a couple of days to read the WikiLeaks illegal revelation of classified State Department cables, I have a few questions.

Who's going to jail, besides the prime suspect Bradley Manning?

How vigorously will Eric Holder and the Justice Department pursue Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks?

Will this result in an overhaul of procedure at the State Department?

And the biggest one: How can Hillary Clinton keep her job as head of State after this happened?

After all, had this occurred at a company in the private sector, say, someone hacked into General Motors' confidential email and spilled the contents all over the Net, what would you expect to happen? A firing at the least and prosecution and jail time at the worst. And whomever was the head of the department that got hacked would step down or be asked to resign.

So, if Hillary resigns or is asked to resign, then what? Does that clear the way for her to oppose President Obama in the 2012 Democrat presidential primaries?

You bet your bippy it does.

Regardless of the fact that Hillary would be pretty much discredited, since the cables show her in Big Sis Mode where she asks for all sorts of information on leaders of other countries, like Argentina's president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Common wisdom has it that Obama tapped her as State Department head to get her out of the way, to make sure she was out of the country where she would pose less of a direct threat to His Awesomeness in Congress as the carpet-bagging Senator from a state where she never lived, New York. If she resigned, it would signal her resurgence onto the presidential stage in 2012, despite her insistence that she was through with elected office. If this happens, look for that tired saw that all pols use, "Although I have said that I was through with elected office, the situation has changed. The country now needs the leadership that only I can provide, etc."

I'm not the first to suggest that she may not hold her post much longer. Jack Shafer over at Slate has indicated as much, as has David Corn over at Politics Daily.

Couple her ineffectiveness as our top diplomat and the efforts in the media to scrub her image squeaky clean between now and the Iowa caucuses, she'll come out smelling like a rose compared to the Obama administration and the malfeasance that is sure to be revealed by the various committees in the incoming Republican Congress.

This plays right into her, and Bill's, hands.

Would this be good for the country? Well, ever since her admonition that she was a "proud progressive," during the last Democrat presidential debates, I'll let you figure that one out for yourself. We've had two years of rule by "progressives" when you count Obama in the White House and Reid and Pelosi in Congress. How's that been working out for you, America?

Are we any better off than we were four years ago when the gavel was handed to Nancy Pelosi?

Do we want more of the same for the foreseeable future? Or was the recent mid-term shellacking merely a blip on the radar screen?

Don't be fooled by a resignation, should one occur. It will only be the preface to a 2012 presidential run for Hillary.

And remember, you heard it here first.

The Cure for WikiLeaks - Typewriters!

I was perusing the Interwebs this morning, mostly about the WikiLeaks leaks of State Department cables once thought to be secure when I ran across this interview with John Bolton's Mustache on Fox News. He says what most of us are thinking: anyone responsible for these leaks needs to be punished severely, up to and including the very serious charge of treason.

Video is here, courtesy of The Right Scoop.

And then I found this little nugget over at Ace of Spades wherein Ace proceeds to solve the problem using a novel method of disseminating information and the rough flow chart to accomplish it. Jump right to the middle...

The only way this can work is if each person who sends a report creates three or four different versions of the same report. The first, the unexpurgated version, only for higher ups; the alternate versions, one scrubbed and one seriously scrubbed. Each person would be responsible then for classifying and redacting his own report, which makes sense, 1, because it's pretty easy to scrub your own report (and takes about five or ten minutes of additional work) and 2, because the person writing the report is in the best position to judge what's truly sensitive and what can be freely disseminated.

Now, you could accomplish this digitally, but then you'd wind up right back where you started as far as vulnerability is concerned. And vulnerability is what this whole thing is all about. Specifically, emotional vulnerability as displayed by Bradley Manning, the gay soldier who is primarily responsible for this blow to American security. Here's his excuse for exposing the country's secrets: "Information should be free. It belongs in the public domain."


What a crock of bullshit. He should spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement as an example of what happens to people who think they know so much better than their superior officers and orders. He should have no contact with the outside world other than for him to realize what he's missing and what didn't need to happen. If one single serviceman comes to harm as a result of his stupid action, he should be executed. No if's, and's or but's about it.

This must be stopped. And the people responsible for this blow to the country should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. As usual, after months of this, our Justice Department finally springs into action. One wonders how vigorously they'll prosecute this apparently cut-and-dried case, since their history of prosecution in cut-and-dried cases is, shall we say, less than stellar (hint, New Black Panther voter intimidation).

Oh for a few typewriters and some white-out...