This is not simply a protest of corporations, but of individuals darkening their own personal sites to illustrate the potential effect of SOPA. As such, they use their supposedly Constitutionally protected freedom of speech to help draw attention to potential censorship -- and that is so far from corruption that it can't see it over the horizon. It is not just a 'corporate protest'.

Sorry, but I think you're crediting me wrongly -- I didn't start the open post. I've been away from home all day and away from the computer. That said, one of the first things I did this morning was check with a friend whose daughter teaches English in Tokyo to make sure she was all right (she is). And then I watched the news footage on many channels on TV and saw the still shots from the BBC and others, and felt shocked at the sheer destructiveness of the quake and the tsunami.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich has taken an interest in Manning's situation; he asked to be allowed to visit Manning on Feb. 4, but all that's happened since then is buck-passing by the military, so Kucinich has not yet been allowed in. Manning's supporters are seeking help from other members of Congress as well. Kucinich has compared Quantico's treatment of Manning to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib.

Julian, I'm not certain that optimality = optimization, where Pareto is concerned. I'm using the term that was used during grad school discussions in economics and political science classes, but that was a couple of decades ago and terminology does sometimes change over time. At the time we were discussing how changes in policy affected both demand curves and results in a population. I also agree with Slarti and you.

While reading economics and political science in grad school, I ran across the concept of Pareto optimality (named for economist/sociologist Vilfredo Pareto). Simply put, an action is Pareto optimal when it increases the wellbeing of the whole group without harming anyone. This can be applied to laws made by Congress, departmental policy decisions, administrative systems, and so on. Examples might include the program to eliminate smallpox and similar efforts to increase public health at all levels, water quality testing to ensure safe drinking water, but smaller actions that have a large effect can also be evaluated with this criterion. By this measure, the brig commander and everyone above her in rank all the way up the line are acting in a non-Pareto-optimal way by treating Manning badly. His suffering does not increase the common good; it sets a precedent that may be used against other servicepeople on active duty if they are captured during wartime. ("Why should we treat you according to the Geneva Conventions when your own government keeps your soldiers naked?") It also further harms the public (domestic and foreign) opinion of the military, the administration, and to some degree the whole country (some people are more generalists than others.) If it's meant to squeeze info on Assange out of Manning, it's a failure; they've never met. Manning allegedly gave files to someone else, who then passed them on; there may have been other people in the chain between himself and Assange as well. If it's meant to show that the US has a no-whistleblower policy, it's a failure; it makes Obama a liar, which does not increase his stature in the international arena. And the thought of the entire weight of the U.S. Marine Corps brig at Quantico enclosing one skinny, naked and very young-looking private gives the mental impression of something between bullying and child abuse (yes, he's of age but he's got a baby face.) None of this is ultimately beneficial to Obama, to the case, to the military, to the country.

CaseyL, thank you for the reassurance. I have learned to take such comments seriously; I am very glad yours was metaphorical rather than literal.

CaseyL, it's taken me a while to think of how to respond to your comment. I don't think it's out of line to feel overwhelmed by Manning's situation. But I don't think that's the end of the story. Putting information together like this may be the first step, or maybe the second, since I have pulled quotes from all over the place to do it. The next step might be for people who are distressed by this to take an action that might help change things. It's not up to me to say what that would be for anyone, though writing to or visiting one's Congressperson may be in order. I do not think self-immolation would be helpful. I realize that I'm not always as skillful at putting together a post as I would like; it is considerably more difficult to write about the deliberate cruelty that Manning endures than to write about the considerable stupidity that occurred within HBGary Federal. If all that has occurred is that you were distressed and made hopeless, I apologize. I do not think that everyone in government or the military is corrupt, venal or compromised. Where I live, I see people who work in both of those areas daily, and many are hardworking, honorable and a credit to their places of employment. But sometimes the people who are in power may need to be reminded that they, too, are subject to laws, rules, and regulations -- and the appearance of the abuse of power can be harmful, too. I hope some of this can be an answer to what you said.

sapient, are you saying that (contrary to Harry Truman's saying) the buck doesn't stop with Obama? I seem to recall that during the Bush administration the policies on treatment of prisoners were either reviewed by or issued from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld with (probably nonwritten) consent from Cheney and/or Bush. Or does ultimate responsibility for the treatment of prisoners only rise to the president's desk when the prisoners are "them" and not "us"?

envy, I'm not sure why Manning would be required to be located on the East Coast, as opposed to anywhere else in the US -- I don't have a sense that putting him at Quantico was done so that he would be available to anyone in particular. Is it common for one branch of service to drop its prisoners-awaiting-court-martial into another branch's brig? However, from what I've heard of conditions at the military prison at Leavenworth, that wouldn't be an improvement.

bc, I link numerous other sources above, including Manning's official complaint. Greenwald is not the only source. Turbulence, it's not random brig workers but the brig commander who has ordered this. What I find disturbing is that Manning's complaint was supposed to be routed *through* the brig commander's office on its way to a more powerful official office, and it apparently never reached its goal. I am no military authority, but that seems like overreaching to me.

wj, it's not too easy to 'choose' to walk as an alternative to Metro if Metro is taking you to work in Virginia from home in Maryland, or from one end of a particular line to the other, which could be 20 or 30 miles. Local buses complement Metro but don't duplicate it; local taxi companies are too expensive for commuting. When the subway trip is well over an hour, walking isn't really an option.

I may be mistaken, but aren't searches at airports done by employees of private security companies, as opposed to governmental (or quasi-governmental) employees? Also, airlines are corporate, not governmental, entities even if the airports are run by municipalities, and I'm not sure all of them are. WMATA, however, is run by representatives of the local governments served in DC, Maryland and Virginia; it is governmentally owned and operated. It is supported by local taxation in those municipalites -- Fairfax and Arlington counties and the city of Alexandria, VA, Montgomery, Prince George's and Howard (I think) counties in Maryland, possibly other small municipalities I am forgetting to list, plus DC, which as a federal city has its government overseen by the federal government as well as the city council and mayor. I don't know if that would make a legal difference but I thought it should be mentioned.

Doctor Science, comment fixed.

I've been playing with a thought experiment as I read the comments, and it keeps coming out in different ways: Imagine that Muammar Gaddaffi of Libya [or any other major political figure from outside the US who has loud anti-US views] is standing in Times Square, New York City, picketing. He is obeying all local laws and regulations regarding location and safety, size and construction of signs, moving around so that he's not legally impeding anyone from going past him. He's not physically interfering with anyone. He is carrying two signs: "Want to Overthrow the US Govt? Ask Me How" and "US Foreign Policy Sucks". Would this be covered by the First Amendment? Does it matter if he's a US citizen or not? His message is not personally aimed at any individual; the message clearly is commentary on national matters. He's not saying "Overthrow the US", but asking if anyone is interested in the idea. The way I read the majority opinion in Phelps, he'd be within First Amendment coverage -- but I am not a lawyer. Or would Homeland Security just haul him away for questioning, to be overruled in an hour or three by someone from the Libyan Embassy with diplomatic immunity?

Countme--In, your comment runs perilously close to calling for the death of various people, which is not allowed according to the posting rules of Obsidian Wings.

People have a right to be complete, utter aholes In public, concerning national issues, impersonally, and within applicable state and local regulations. That's what the majority said.

McKinney, the decision is very narrow, and applies to a protest in which Westboro members were silent and behaved themselves within local law. This has not always been the case; if it were, motorcyclists would not have been called to drown out their yelling at some funerals. Do you think that, in light of this decision, the Westboro members might stick to silent protests in the future?

Would 200-plus years of constitutional case law count as a penumbra?

Efgoldman, I agree with you about the public vs. private hairsplitting. As for newspapers -- well, preventing the publication of libel or slander is one of the things editors are paid to do. I'm not sure that absence of prior restraint falls into the same category as the public vs. private protest. Would you say more on this?

LJ, I don't know. I have taken some law courses, but I am not an attorney, and most of my experience in following what the Court does comes from reading the opinions. That's why I was wishing I could have heard the discussions in chambers, because the gap between the oral arguments and the decision feels disjointed to me.

Catsy, it seems to me that your argument is with Justice Alito, not me. Westboro's public protest, this time apparently a quiet one, has received public protection in the majority opinion; I'm not debating that. The Court drew its line based on the protest being public, law-abiding and impersonal; however, the online Westboro protest was personal and specifically aimed at the Snyder family, which should make it liable to civil suit like any other hate-filled defamatory personal remark made in public. Not all speech is completely protected by the First Amendment -- the exceptions that come to mind are obscenity (whatever that is defined as this week), yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theatre (false alarm causing panic), and libel or slander; there may well be others of which I'm unaware. Since American law does not recognize libel or slander of the dead, the Snyders' legal option appears to be a civil case for IIED. Since you seem to be rejecting the public vs. private and impersonal vs. personal basis on which the opinions were based, what would you consider to be a defensible basis for determining which version of odious speech is protected and which is not?

...Which is, of course, the start of Marc Antony's speech over the body of Julius Caesar, in the preceding scene (Act 3, scene 2).

LJ: Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest - For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men - Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.

Russell, the way things are going, that may be the only place Barr could get hired now if he left HBGary.

Turbulence, when there were multiple newspapers in most cities -- small and medium ones included -- there were also multiple wire services. The same AP news did not go in each paper. One might have AP, the other UPI or Reuters or a different service, and each service had its own slightly different way of reporting. Salaries were lower, so it cost less for the larger papers and wire services to have their own reporters "on the scene" at events, which also provided more diversity in coverage. Multiple papers in the same city often sided with different groups or political parties. And there were many differences in style and coverage: for a current example of this, consider the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. As for coverage that avoids strong emotion -- strong emotions sell papers. That's why newspapers put murders, big court cases, tornadoes, emergencies, wars, peace declarations and presidential assassinations on page one. Watergate ran on page one. So did Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech from the Lincoln Memorial. So did the Challenger disaster, and John F. Kennedy's death in Dallas. Any newspaper that avoids news because of strong emotion is a newspaper that is run by people who are missing the point. I disagree with your view of newspapers' core demographic being "old people" because that's a pretty broad generalization. It's important to specify things like what "old" means -- over 20? over 40? over 80? -- and what size of newspaper you're considering. The age of readership for a community newspaper in a smaller city may be much different than in a larger city; if it's the only place in town where people will get their coupons for 20 cents a pound off ground beef, they'll buy the paper. (Coupons and advertising support circulation in a lot of ways.) In smaller newspapers, when the school band wins an award everyone in town who knows a kid in the band buys a paper -- and there's always something going on with some community group (YMCA, Scouts, Women's Club, Elks, Moose, firefighters, American Legion) that is getting coverage, which also supports papers. There are also the business-oriented and sector-based newspapers, like The Chronicle of Higher Education or the Rochester (NY) Business Journal, or The Sporting News, which are read by people of all ages within their area of interest. They may not be general-interest newspapers, but they're still newspapers. As for the benefit of having reporters in Cairo (or anywhere else), personally, I'd rather have more feet on the ground and more eyes watching events and more people there writing stories than fewer. No two people's news coverage will be identical, and each one will pick up something another misses. If everyone covered exactly the same thing about Wikileaks, do you think I'd have so many links in this post?