Distancing himself from Republican Party orthodoxy (as he's prone to doing), Texas Congressman Ron Paul gave a rousing speech on the U.S. House floor in support of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. "Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?" asked Paul. He went on to compare WikiLeaks to the Pentagon Papers, explaining how both exposed American wars that were based on "lies." He also asked his colleagues which events caused more deaths, "Lying us into war, or the release of the WikiLeaks papers?"

Reflecting on the speech, Mediaite's Colby Hall called it "passionate" and labeled Paul a "conservative iconoclast."  Here's a video of the speech and some of the questions with which Paul wraps up (for full list, see FromTheOld or Mediaite):

Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?

Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?

Number 3: Why is the hostility directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?

Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?

Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

(Hat tip: Mediaite for supplying the quotes)

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John Hudson