Thread by @AumoneMaison

Another absolutely great post on VOAT today!
The media is hiding under the pretense that they can publish whatever they want and be immune due to the first amendment. The problems they are going to have are that the first amendment doesn't protect you from intentionally

2. seeking out, or coaching people to get information for you to publish. If it falls in your lap, that's fine, but you can't be an active part of obtaining it or else it's criminal conspiracy. Furthermore, there is obviously an irregular war going on in the country. The military

3. will have to come out and designate it as such and name people who have been giving any sort of aid to the enemies they have identified for anything to really happen on that front. Over the past decades, there haven't really been cases of news people getting put in prison for

4. publications which leads people to believe they can basically operate with impunity.

In comes the legal finesse. Assange is very well known, and isn't just a publisher, he allegedly provided material aid to Manning so that he could steal classified documents and subsequently

5. leak them to Assange. When there is a criminal case that will set precedent for future prosecutions, the prosecutors will search for and choose the strongest case possible (because they know it will likely end up in the Supreme Court). Kansas v. Hendricks is a hallmark case

6. of this concept. The prosecutors sat on bringing up the issue of civil detention for a while until they found the worst possible pedophile offender to put in front of the SC for the best chances of getting the ruling they wanted. The guy was a repeat offender who said that the

7. only way to stop him was to kill him, and they got the ruling they wanted - that civil detention isn't counted as double jeopardy because it isn't "criminal punishment" in nature. I obviously don't have access to the classified information the DOJ has on Assange, but I'm

8. seeing similarities in their tactics so I'm willing to bet they have an extremely strong case. I think they are holding out on prosecuting our journalists right now because if they bring a "weaker" case against one of the journalists who was being shady with the leaks, it

9. might not go the way they want. Assange allegedly aided Manning in stealing a massive amount of classified military information and if the Supreme Court rules that journalists can be charged for being directly involved in the process of the leaks instead of a passive/unknowing

10. party, then that ruling will open the door for all of the "weaker" cases to be prosecuted extremely effectively.