Prepare thyself for the Holy Martyrdom of Julian Assange.

[Denzil_DC]

42. Assange doesn't have any "first amendment rights".

He's not an American citizen.

Most Western democracies do pay lip service to "freedom of speech" and "whistleblowing", though.

Nevertheless, I also regret that the extradition request, as far as we know at the moment, focuses on this, arguably the more defensible among things that Wikileaks has done while Assange has been running it.

What accounts have revealed that Assange did while involved with Manning crossed the boundary of journalism where Assange conspired with Manning to attempt to hack (whether they were successful or not) into the US government's systems in pursuit of more revelations. His cavalier attitude to the safety of people in other countries compromised as a result of Wikileaks' revelations also has nothing to do with journalistic ethics.

It's an uneasy balance, and one investigative journalists with proper training are very aware of and wary of, not least in case precisely such a case as this risks peeling away at the freedoms of the press. Assange has no such scruples and no such training.