Twenty-three hours of solitary confinement isn’t sitting well with Ohio’s Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who wants the Pentagon to grant a visit with accused Wikileaker Bradley Manning. This isn’t just a remarkable development for Manning’s health. It’s also a remarkable development for lawmakers in general, who so far have been outshined by Sen. Joe Lieberman’s feelings on espionage, and have been hesitant to touch Manning with a ten-foot pole because of the political implications. (Defending a person already branded a national security threat? You might as well go rollerblading with Osama.) Kucinich, who sits on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is looking out for Manning’s “basic constitutional rights,” he tells MSNBC, as well as his “mental health.” The ball is now in Sec. of Defense Robert Gates’ court, who will ultimately decide whether lawmakers can go see Manning at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. Gates’ response should be, simply, “of course.”
constitutional rights
Is Rep. Dennis Kucinich The Only One Who Wants To Know WTF Is Going On With Bradley Manning?
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Fagburn
Thanks for posting this Queerty – it’s so clear they want to break Bradley…
Fagburn
Also why have the British gay press not written one word about Bradley Manning???
Cause they is right-wing know-nothing goons?
http://www.fagburn.com/2011/01/bradley-manning-five-to-one.html
kayla
Either they should prosecute Bradley, or let him f&%king go!! Why isn’t the press asking Obama about this…either they have the evidence to prosecute him, or they don’t!! I can imagine what his family is going through…If he was my brother, I’d be losing my freaking mind.
SouthSideShorty
Such BS. If this traitorous little weasel wasn’t gay, would you still be trumpeting his civil rights? What if he were being held for murdering gay men, would you still be defending him?
This is not a victim. He’s a bad man who did bad things without regard for anyone but himself. Don’t turn a traitor into a martyr.
GayGOP
Well, the good news is, Ohio will be losing two congressional seats, and the Ohio legislature, and the Ohio Governor are Republican, so this loon will likely be out of a seat come 2012.
Hopefully the trial of Manning can come soon, and he can be punished for his crimes.
Fagburn
Thank flip I’m not a brainwashed right-wing goon.
How do you twerps feel about someone being punished for WAR CRIMES?
Soupy
The ACLU would speak out for his cause, gay or straight, because he is being denied his rights. Timothy McVeigh wasn’t. As far as traitor and war crimes go, Bush and Cheney lead the pack.
B
No. 4 · SouthSideShorty wrote, “Such BS. If this traitorous little weasel wasn’t gay, would you still be trumpeting his civil rights? What if he were being held for murdering gay men, would you still be defending him?”
Civil rights are designed to protect the innocent. If Manning did what is claimed, there should be so much evidence that convicting him would be a slam dunk. So why haven’t they tried him yet? It’s not like he is some genius who figured out how to solve NP complete problems in polynomial time (which would be a major breakthrough in computer science and would mean the end of public key encryption).
As to the hypothetical “guy murdering gay men”, we should defend his right to a fair trial. Even if you don’t care about a defendant’s guilt or innocence as long as someone is punished, if you convict the wrong guy, that means the murderer is still running around and could kill another victim.
SouthSideShorty
I’m all for Manning getting an expeditious and fair trial, but I can’t fathom the overwhelming support this man has garnished from the gay community just because he’s gay. It’s painfully reminiscent of the support OJ Simpson received from the black community: “We support our own, proof be damned.” This philosophy is what results in a nation of hyphenates.
jak
Send him to the gulag.
Soupy
“Proof” is offered as evidence at trial. Everything before hand is speculation. Otherwise, you could easily “convict” Bush and Cheney of war crimes.
Kevin
@GayGOP: You don’t understand very much about Gerrymandering, do you? Or at least not about Ohio. Let me break it down; there is, in NE Ohio, a very large number of very democratic voters. Since they can’t be gotten rid of, the (longtime Republican) legislature tries to concentrate all of them into one snaky district. Sure, it’s a lock that district goes Democrat, but by putting most of the Democrats in that one district, the legislature can make a bunch of Republican-leaning districts on the edges. Kucinich is in the permanently-Democratic district. Really the only way to gerrymander him out is to purposely draw the district around his place of residence, but otherwise he’ll be there pretty much forever. And even if you do that, I wouldn’t be surprised if he moved a little to stay with “his” district.
B
No. 9 · SouthSideShorty wrote, “I’m all for Manning getting an expeditious and fair trial, but I can’t fathom the overwhelming support this man has garnished from the gay community just because he’s gay.”
This isn’t “Though the Looking Glass” where you punish the guy
first, then hold the trial, and then he commits the crime (and if he doesn’t all the better).
23 hours per day of solitary confinement is punitive and not justifiable given that he has not yet been convicted. You’d
almost think they were trying to wear the guy down to the point
where he could not help with his defense should he actually be
tried.
What justification is there for solitary confinement? Even if he did release all those documents, he probably never read most of them, or understood them for that matter. In a “chat” with some guy named Adrian Lamo, Manning supposedly claimed to have leaked classified documents. Maybe he did release all those documents, but he could also have made it all up, sending Lamo BS to see what his reaction would be.
Meanwhile, according to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/24/bradley-manning-wikileaks-_n_813445.html “military investigators have been unable to find a direct link between … Bradley Manning and Wikileaks.”
Given all that, maybe it makes sense to withhold judgment about him until the trial is finished. At least at that point we’ll see all the evidence and will know how any witnesses held up under cross examination.
Tom
@SouthSideShorty:
Manning is NOT gay. She is a heterosexual transsexual. She has as much to do with gay people as any other heterosexual who violates her oath – nothing.
Yet gays and lesbians – and esp. loyal gay and lesbian soldiers – are being smeared with her criminal actions and are being stigmatized by her psychological and emotional problems.
Why should gay and lesbian soldiers have to bear this burden? For one reason and one reason only: a group of white, upper-class males decided that it would be cool and transgressive to lump gays in with “trangendered” thus creating the bizarre concept of LGBT, so that we could all enjoy the thrill of being marginalized “queers”.
Look at the name of this website. This is a for-profit website, funded by venture capitalists who are looking for a Huffington Post-style payout. They are more than happy to sacrifice a good future for gay people in order to generate more hits by posturing as “queer” rebels. We need to reject “queer” and “LGBT” and start working for our future.
reason
Not a fan of Kucinich but it is appreciable that some one is there to try to challenge the government to keep them a little honest on what is a very difficult situation. At the same time I don’t see where the government has done anything illegal, this is an enemy of the state who has aided and provided material support for an enemy that we are at war with. That puts him in a different category especially during this ongoing war, the people in Gitmo have not won any legal concessions so I don’t see any error thus far in treating him any differently then one of the terrorist at Gitmo.
justiceontherocks
@reason: Please become an ex-gay. If you can’t do that please at least stop using big words you don’t know the meaning of. Itks pathetic.
David Gervais
re: No. 9 · SouthSideShorty
It doesn’t matter if Bradley Manning is Male, Female, Straight, Gay, Other, Martian or Dolphin.
Civil Rights are the muscles of the body politic. We must exercise them or we will lose them. If we do not defend everyone’s rights, then we are defending no-one’s rights.
Other people have said things along the same lines:
No man is an Island, entire of itself; …
any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind;…. -John Donne
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. -US Constitution
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. – US Declaration of Independence
They came first for the …, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a …
Then they came for the …, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a ….
Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up. -Pastor Martin Niemöller
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -Martin Luther King
Shorty, your comment does not deserve the protection it has, however, you get it anyways.
Trieste
David Gervais : I agree with all you say, and those quotes, but most gay men don’t. Ever read the comments to any article covering someone accused of anti-gay crimes? Most gays scream to torture and kill first, ask questions later. And even when the accused turns out to be innocent, there are no apologies.
Devon
As someone said above Manning is a wannabe woman not a gay man.
this is what u get when u tell the world that gays and shemales come from the same group.they should put the shim before a firing squad and let any gay soldiers who want to to finish the job.
David Gervais
Trieste:
I appreciate your comment, however, be careful when saying Most somebodies do this…. I agree that the effect you point out exists, but it is not most gays anything, just a few certain loud voices. You will always find me putting in my two cents worth for freedoms and civil rights.
As I said earlier elsewhere, Your country has very strict rules about assumption of innocence until proven otherwise.
Trieste
David Gervais : I can only go by “most” gays I’ve known personally, and most of those leaving comments on blogs. I’ll grant you, though, I guess that still wouldn’t prove “most gays” in a court of law. The gays that hang around blogs too much are generally the bitter loudmouthed ones with too much time on their hands, and…….maybe I also just fell into a particularly nasty gay clique.
David Gervais
Trieste:
I think your analysis is correct.
Now apply the same analysis to the ‘statistics prove’ that line you hear so often. Biased samples produce biased results.
Cam
@SouthSideShorty: said…
He’s a bad man who did bad things without regard for anyone but himself.
____________________
Information he leaked showed that our govt. is aware that the Afghan govt. is not a partner and is stealing money that is supposed to be going to infrastructure. Also, the leaked docs showed that our govt. is fully aware that the govt. of Pakistan is taking our money and yet still reporting some troop movements to the Taliban, causing the death of many of our soldiers yet our govt. isn’t doing anything about that.
So tell me again how bad the person is who got that information out there.
SouthSideShorty
@Tom: Hey, Tom, are you just . . . nuts? Bradley Manning is a female tranny? Huh?
But I must address the LGBT label: I too do not want to be labeled in such a broad manner. If I declare myself LGBT, then people are left to wonder, “Is he gay? Is he bi? Is he in the process of becoming a woman?” There’s no reason to leave open so much interpretation from a label.
gwegowee
I’ve ?’ed Kucinich since the 2008 Presidential Elections!!!
Just sayin’.
Tom
@SouthSideShorty: Thanks for your thoughts on LGBT. If it causes confusion for us, just imagine the added burden it imposes on young gays and lesbians trying to educate their peers in school.
As for Manning, I can assure you that I am not nuts. Go to Wired Magazine’s website and search for their coverage of Manning. Manning was busted when he confessed to a hacker via various online chats. Wired published excerpts of those chats and Manning makes it very clear that she considers herself a woman. Obviously she has not begun the transition process and so appears outwardly to be male. But that doesn’t alter the fact that Bradley Manning identifies as – and is – a heterosexual trans female, not a gay man.
Sarcastico
Bradley Manning’s sexual identity is irrelevant. He is a US citizen that has not been tried or convicted of any crime.
Mel
@SouthSideShorty:
Why is he a bad man? No one has been killed because of his actions, he hasn’t killed anybody, no one has come to harm but Bradley Manning himself. He saw civilians, everyday people like you & me, getting killed & when he went to report it, he was told to look the other way.
Now who is the bad person here? The person turning a blind eye, or the person who is willing to sacrifice his freedom for the truth?
I say Bradley Manning is a hero. He is a hero in the eyes of many reasonable westerners from America all the way to the UK. If you don’t see why, then I say you’re one of the “evil people” that the world doesn’t need.