chelsea manning: Pictures, Videos, Breaking News

Alford writes that whistleblowers have "seen what one is not supposed to know." In exposing a wrong, they have risked and lost much -- job, status, security, liberty, friends. To come to a resolution, they would also lose their faith in the adages we buy into as the currency of the social order: life is fair, the system isn't stacked against us, the individual matters, the truth shall set us free.

Nan Levinson

Author of 'War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement They Built'

We as a culture do not like women as autonomous beings. We do not support them -- sometimes we punish them.

The free flow of information is necessary for a democratic society, and this flow cannot be purely in the hands of government. This is why the rights to expression and a free and open press are among the most widely recognized rights on earth.

Obama's Justice Department has brought more than twice as many prosecutions for the crime of leaking confidential information to journalists as the combined total of all presidents back to Woodrow Wilson. Whether you agree with Obama's track record of such prosecutions, you'd have to admit that treating Petraeus differently would be indefensible hypocrisy and elitism.

Cliven Bundy isn't the only one saying strange things; take our Week to Week news quiz to see if you can identify the others.

John Zipperer

Vice president of media & editorial, The Commonwealth Club of California

Hopefully today's name change, so meaningful to me personally, can also raise awareness of the fact that we trans* people exist everywhere in America today, and that we must jump through hurdles every day just for being who we are.

Chelsea Manning

Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst, military whistleblower and democracy advocate

On Tuesday, the San Francisco Pride Committee, under a new board, did the LGBT community proud by finally conferring one of our community's highest honors upon one of its most courageous individuals, Private Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

Andy Thayer

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

It should be a matter of national and mass priority to pursue these things and the government that refuses to pursue them can scarcely be called a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" in any meaningful way.

Our state of affairs goes against a pinnacle of American justice, equality before law, facilitating everything from war crimes, to torture, to domestic spying, to a predatory, ravenous Wall Street that feeds on the middle class with impunity.

My fellow Americans: I deliver this address at a time of great distress in our nation. Never before have we faced challenges of such severity as we d...

C. Robert Gibson

Independent journalist published in Guardian, the Washington Post, Al Jazeera America, NPR, and other publications

This has been -- officially at least -- one of those quiet weeks for political reporters. But members of both House and Senate are in this quiet time having to think hard about the uncomfortably hot potato recently tossed into their laps by President Obama.

What an amazing year for the movement of movements that continues to develop here in the United States and around the world.

Dennis Trainor

Creator of Acronym TV/ Director- American Autumn: an Occudoc

Tutu was part of a tsunami of change that challenged and toppled the walls of apartheid. But he was not finished then. He has continued to fight onwards to publicize the plight and agitate for positive change.

Every American should be outraged that leakers and whistleblowers are being prosecuted under an espionage statute without ever having to show they meant to harm the U.S. or that any harm actually occurred.

Trevor Timm

Executive Director, Freedom of the Press Foundation

This week's Real Talk With Rob Smith takes on homophobia in hip-hop, Russia, and Chelsea Manning. ...

Rob Smith

Iraq war veteran, author, public speaker and LGBT activist

As the State Department and the DoD reluctantly concluded at Manning's trial, little if any verifiable damage was indeed done to the United States. There is no denying that the disclosures were embarrassing and awkward, but that is not worth most of a man's life.

Peter Van Buren

Author of "Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent" and "We Meant Well"

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chelsea manning: Pictures, Videos, Breaking News