Rebel of the Week: Judge Andrew Napolitano
December 1st, 2010I think we can all agree that a trustworthy news source is not something you run to the Fox News channel for. This week you may change your mind about that predisposition. All around the airwaves the shock of Wikileaks most recent release of “classified” war documents has kept ears and eyes to the news. The media and other public figures are claiming that private, Bradley Manning and Wikileaks will carry blood on their hands after the circulation of such devastating information. Bill Clinton spoke last night in North Carolina stating, “I’ll be very surprised if some people don’t lose their lives. And goodness knows how many will lose their careers.”
Among the many articles, interviews, and spun stories revolving Wikileaks war document
disclosure a voice stood out in the nightly news. Fox News Freedom Watch host, Judge Andrew Napolitano, claims the military was not put in harms way, yet the reputation of the government was put in harms way after the Wikileaks revelations. Napolitano was one of the few voices speaking out in support of Wikileaks action in mainstream media and for that is named Silver Circle’s Rebel of the Week Award.
Judge Napolitano is a former New Jersey Supreme Court judge turned political and legal analyst for the Fox News Channel. He has been outspoken on many civil liberty issues such as the recent measures, the Patriot Act, as well as foreign policy.
Monday night Judge Napolitano covered the Wikileaks story in a different light compared to the rest of the lime light figures. He called out the government and their empirical stance around the world. With Julian Assange at the center for scrutiny, Judge Napolitano to show that Assange and others involved with Wikileaks did not illegally obtain the information. The document was given to Wikileaks, and according to the Judge Wikileaks is, “free to publish it, to discuss it, to analyze it without any criminal activity at all.”
Much of what was released within the documents concerned military strategies, classified information on leaders in other countries, as well as financially relevant details that the American people would probably be sick from after reading. The U.S. military has been exerting force across hundreds of nations and now some of the facts that lie within their tactics are being exposed. Our Rebel of the Week is showing that it’s not Wikileaks we should be blaming, we should be looking at the government and the war crimes they have committed over the past decades. The only worry should be from the government and how this will affect their reputation. The government will protect their reputation at all costs, thus, their reasoning for the finger pointing and shaming Wikileaks.
Our Rebel of the Week confidently stands up for the whistleblowers at a time when no one seems to be on their side. He holds strong legal reasons to back up Wikileaks and is not doing it out of love for the underdog. We have many reasons to honor Judge Andrew Napolitano for the work he has done in protecting our civil liberties as Americans, but this week we’d like to thank him for being a champion of the painful truth, the way a real Rebel would.
