Ron Paul Defends WikiLeaks on Twitter

(Dec. 3) -- Not everyone is out to get Julian Assange.

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman and former presidential candidate, took to his Twitter feed today and put up a staunch defense of WikiLeaks, the whistle-blower website that so many in the U.S. government love to hate. From Newt Gingrich to Hillary Rodham Clinton to Sarah Palin, American politicians spent the week excoriating Assange, the site's founder, for leaking classified government documents to the world.

But the iconoclastic Rep. Paul wasn't joining about to join in the chorus.

Re: Wikileaks- In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.less than a minute ago via webRon Paul
RepRonPaul

Later, in an interview on the Fox Business Network, Paul further explained his view. "This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason," Paul said. "I mean, aren't they jumping to a wild conclusion? This is media, isn't it? I mean, why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?"

The view that WikiLeaks is simply doing what any self-respecting journalistic outfit should has been voiced by others, too. Salon's Glenn Greenwald has been praising WikiLeaks for exposing "corruption and injustice." And when Sen. Joe Lieberman convinced Amazon.com to purge WikiLeaks from its server, Greenwald fired off the following message to his Twitter followers.

Does anyone care that Joe Lieberman is running around single-handedly censoring political content from the Internet??? http://is.gd/i6VHYless than a minute ago via webGlenn Greenwald
ggreenwald

In part the debate over WikiLeaks is one about the role of secrecy. While most world governments would argue that they must be allowed to conduct their dealings with a certain amount of secrecy, others, like Greenwald and Paul, counter that full transparency is a better way to cure what ails society.

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