The reason rights weren’t explicitly covered in the Constitution is that the Constitution’s authors presumed that America would continue to use the Common Law and the Natural Law on which it was based. Nobody ever thought that statute law would replace this edifice entirely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Verdugo-Urquidez

Does Assange have some moral rights generally speaking? Sure. But he has no rights under the U.S. Constitution.

You have proven my point without intending to do so.

Bork and Scalia would have laughed you out of the court room.

However, when an enemy makes war against the US, by ancient treaty the US is allowed to make war back against that enemy. M. Assange might not like the result of that, any more than M. bin Laden will like it when he finally is caught in the blast radius of a MOAB, and wakes up in Hell.

So what source of “rights” are you referring to?

The last 10 years have done a lot of damage to how the Constitution was applied in situations of war and treason. The Founders would not have agreed that Assange has any rights—at least not under the US Constitution.

We may want to be respectful of the nation in which he resides for diplomatic reasons, but there are no rights prohibiting US action against him.

Clearly, the acts of Assange and WikiLeaks here do affect U.S. security, are directed towards affecting our government functions, and are contrary to our domestic laws.

The Protective Principle is a matter of customary international law so it is not some minority doctrine that would be greatly opposed in the world community – ESPECIALLY since the acts of Assange affect not only our governmental functionality, but also that of many other states.

Each of the potential suspects is somewhere within a chain of command. The information leaked should indicate where, and the entire chain(s) should be suspended forthwith, and the barn door(s) belatedly locked down. Then let the games begin. Anyone failing a polygraph, gets to find out firsthand whether waterboarding is really “torture.”

1) At this point of the Obama administration foreign policy, these leaks will probably make us look better, not worse if they reveal to the world that we have some intelligent thinkers around rather than weak-willed syncophants.

2) He’s giving us a road map as to the vulnerabilities in our security systems.

3) If we win the White House in 2013, these leaks will give our President grounds to be able to clean out the State Department and rebuild from the bottom up.

In short, after some short term pain, we have a good chance of emerging stronger.

None of this negates the fate in store for Assange for his hostile actions against the U.S. Just pointing out that the outcome will likely not be what he envisioned.

Frankly, Bush should have empaneled a fed grand jury and called the entire executive suite at the NYT in to testify about who gave them top secret info. They would have declined to testify and they should have been found in contempt and sent to Gitmo. Or Romania.

We are at war. Just because Assange happens to live in a non-combatant country – although they do have troops in a war zone – is a meaningless exercise in geography.