Leslie Hatfield

Senior editor, GRACE

It's outrageous that tax dollars would be used to lobby on behalf of a handful of private corporations, which clearly do not lack the resources to do so on their own.

Andrew Lenoir

Columbia MFA Student

We need to level the playing field, and to do that we need to open the door and let everyone into the library. The question becomes how far to open that door, and where to draw the line on what is necessary and what is dangerous information.

William Astore

Writer, Professor, Retired Lt. Colonel, Air Force

You can hardly point out that the Emperor has no clothes if you're not even allowed to look in his direction. And that's precisely the point of the government's war on whistleblowers. The message couldn't be more clear or more authoritarian: Avert your eyes, citizens!

Victor Lopez

Student, Guilford College; Senior Staff Writer, The Guilfordian; President, Student Government Association

What Manning and WikiLeaks shared was journalism in its purest form, plain and simple. What follows is a dog and pony show where Bradley will likely pay with his life.

Joseph A. Palermo

Associate professor, historian, author

Can students really be taught critical thinking, civics, and citizenship skills in a standardized format that values conformity? Will relying on MOOCs and automation in the long-term turn professors into "delivery managers" and students into automatons and passive consumers rather than citizens?

Edward Wasserman

Dean, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

He was a great source. His information was solid. The world's best news organizations believed it was of immense public value. So now he goes to jail, perhaps for life, and the media stand in silence?

Andy Thayer

Anti-war activist and co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network in Chicago

This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the second U.S.-Iraq War. It was a war that, for the baldness of the lies used to justify it, came to symbolize the arrogance of American assertion of power over the other peoples who inhabit the globe.

Geoffrey R. Stone

Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago

The military's argument that Bradley Manning violated the aiding the enemy statute is clearly ill-founded.

Daniel Ellsberg

Former American military analyst who sparked a national uproar in 1971.

Today, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has published an audio recording of Bradley Manning's speech to a military court from two weeks ago, in which he gives his reasons and motivations behind leaking over 700,000 government documents to WikiLeaks.

John W. Whitehead

Attorney, President of The Rutherford Institute, and author of A Government of Wolves (due out in April 2013)

While brave men and women such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry David Thoreau, Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman are lauded as American heroes today, they were once considered enemies of the state.

Norman Solomon

Author, 'War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death'

Stringent "background checks" are central to many proposals for curbing gun violence. The following is a background check on the nation's largest buyer of firearms.

Anthony Gregory

Research Fellow at the Independent Institute; Author of forthcoming 'The Power of Habeas Corpus'

Many struggle to reconcile their genuine commitments to human rights with their admiration for the president. But here no reconciliation is possible.

Emmett Rensin

Author, editor and Magic card enthusiast

The cause of government transparency in general, and even of WikiLeaks in particular, doesn't live or die with Julian Assange. If he's innocent, then I'm happy to let him keep his place at the head of this important movement. But if he's guilty, the world won't end.

Marjorie Cohn

Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty to 10 charges including possessing and willfully communicating to an unauthorized person all the main elements of the WikiLeaks disclosure.

Andy Thayer

Anti-war activist and co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network in Chicago

Why is it that all of the big gay nonprofits have failed to utter a word of support for Private Bradley Manning, let alone really campaign for him? It's political cowardice.

Phil Campbell

Writer, author

His face is painted as a mural on the wall of a brick building next to a deli in my neighborhood. The mural is simple and carelessly done, but it always holds the power to jar me out of my post-work stupor.