Here is the money-shot of Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project's statement on the extradition of Julian Assange.
"Criminally prosecuting a publisher for the publication of truthful information would be a first in American history, and unconstitutional. The government did not cross that Rubicon with today’s indictment, but the worst case scenario cannot yet be ruled out. We have no assurance that these are the only charges the government plans to bring against Mr. Assange. Further, while there is no First Amendment right to crack a government password, this indictment characterizes as ‘part of’ a criminal conspiracy the routine and protected activities journalists often engage in as part of their daily jobs, such as encouraging a source to provide more information. Given President Trump’s and his administration’s well-documented attacks on the freedom of the press, such characterizations are especially worrisome.”
What assurances do any of us have that the government, especially under the depraved Republican domination the ACLU's concept of "speech" and "freedom of the press" has produced that the government won't over step at some point in prosecuting someone who, like Assange, has clearly violated the law? And note, Wizner's disingenuous insertion of the alleged and highly arguable journalistic character of Assange and his crime operation even as he admits that isn't what the American government is indicting him for. From what I understand (thanks largely to the erudite Phil) is that Britain has very stringent laws governing extradition that would prohibit sending him to the US that would bar the US government from bringing charges he was not extradited for.
What spy couldn't be protected if all you have to do is call yourself a "journalist" and get knee-jerk jerks to go along with that under Wizner's formulation? Who couldn't be protected from conducting espionage of the kind that Assange did? It leaves a country which has "free press" vulnerable to any attack by any agent of any gangster regime, anywhere. Which, I have to conclude, is AOK with the ACLU. "Free press" like "gun rights" language the gun lobby here fell for, is nothing that Assange's clear patron and cohort, Putin has any intention of allowing in the Russia he dictates over. That's the kind of criminal regime the ACLU's position leaves the United States and its past advocacy open to.
As to Wizners' playing the card of "government overreach", I can answer that, there is not and never has been any guarantee that any government, anywhere won't overreach. If that were a legitimate issue, no laws would be safely made because there is always a potential for governments, corrupt prosecutors, corrupt judges, etc. using any provision of the law illegitimately. Wizner's and the ACLU's rote, knee-jerky response to support this most illegitimate darling of the deluded play-left is a perfect example of ACLU style double speak. It is so stupid that I would classify it as a fund-raising statement, appealing to emotions and that lefty paranoia that so much ACLU fundraising has been centered around. Wizner's job description should be changed to "fund raiser".
It's also in line with the ACLU's entire line of "free speech" "free press" slogans which, having been adopted by the Rehnquist and Roberts courts (and the neo-Nazis the ACLU has championed in the past) have used (with supporting briefs from the ACLU) to stop every single instance of the Congress, past presidents, state legislatures and governors from trying to clean the corruption of big money out of our politics, the thing which has given us "President Trump’s and his administration’s well-documented attacks on the freedom of the press." Especially those which helped free the New York Times and the cabloid lie industry in their demonization and sandbagging of Hillary Clinton with well-placed lies right before the election. As I recall even the warning by some of its past officials didn't keep the ACLU from ignoring the warnings that the Citizens United ruling would open us up to the big money corruption of foreign billionaires. The "such characterizations" that to Wizner "are especially worrisome" are a direct result of the ACLU's idiotic absolutism in regard to the very issues that this putz, Wizner uses in his unadmitted fundraising PR. The Republican-fascists could never have lied Donald Trump, a 100% creation of the corporate media, into the presidency without that line of ACLU bromindes entering into US law through the Supreme Court.
The ACLU is one of the biggest and stupidest frauds that the American left has ever bought, it might be the biggest one. It's a lot to swallow to admit that some of the criticism of the ACLU by the right which I abhor, is, in fact, legitimate.
The ACLU is an example of the elite play-left's anti-Americanism, which is why it can overlook the fact that we are under attack THROUGH THE FREE PRESS THAT THEY HELPED FREE FROM AN OBLIGATION TO TELL THE TRUTH AND NOT LIES and to protect from civil actions when they told lies against liberals and others who were unprofitable for their fellow rich people. I'm sure you could go through their various briefs submitted in such cases and find all kinds of bull shit claiming that the lies of the press were innocuous and would be overcome by the truths told by the press they would take to be respectable when the history of lies spread in the mass media were known to be extremely damaging to democracy and to the lives of those lied about, especially minority groups who are discriminated against. The lawyers, most of them White and either from affluence or having great expectations of becoming affluent through their legal practice, were hardly the ones in danger of being the recipients of the end product of their "free speech - free press" theories.
In the past decade, looking at who some of those "liberal" lawyers take on as clients, everyone from Greg Craig sharing a dictator-client with Paul Manafort to the demi-god of conventional liberalism, Lawrence Tribe, hearing their excuses for representing dictators and coal companies in terms of their personal finances, listening to the Democratic lawyers who assured us that Rosenstein and Barr (perhaps Muller as well) were sterling fellows whose devotion to the institution of the Department of Justice meant we should trust them, I have come to distrust elite lawyers almost as much as I distrust the ACLU. One of the biggest hits in my respect for such lawyers was when I heard and read the number of "liberal" lawyers and members of courts (all of them with some professional relationship to him) who endorsed Samuel Alito's nomination and, in the most recent case, even Brett Kavanaugh. As I said the other day, I think when we hear someone say "institutionalist" we should translate that into the truth, "careerist". I think the confidence we have put in "liberal" lawyers has hardly been a sound investment. I stopped donating to the ACLU way back when they championed the soi disant "rights" of Nazis to terrorize Holocaust survivors in Skokie. That was the first of the huge cracks in my conventional secular liberalism. Reading more about the actual history of the ACLU helped bring down a lot more of it.
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