As a libertarian I am deeply concerned with the huge intelligence complex the United States has set up. I am concerned with the loss of person freedoms in the country, and I am concerned that our political leaders -- of every party -- lie to us rather than deal with some of these serious issues.

But I refuse to take an all-or-nothing view. Our intelligence services also exist for a very good reason, and they do necessary and critical work.

That's why I remain convinced that this leaker should receive the death penalty. It's not up to each person in an intelligence organization to make huge moral judgments about the disposition of millions of documents. If you have moral problems, resign.

And to suggest, as some have, that the newspapers have any idea what to publish or not is ludicrous. Intelligence is a process of putting puzzle pieces together. Unless the newspapers were to know what every other foreign intelligence service knew, they couldn't know which pieces fill out the puzzle for which agencies -- or what impact each little piece could have.

Hell, I'm even for publishing secret documents if they show how the political class is bullshitting us, as in the Pentagon Papers. But this goes way far and beyond that. We will never know who got killed because of this jerk.

And now for the political/systems note. It seems that as society is getting more and more full of rules that we get these sudden breakouts of flash-back. It's almost like the more the system tries to control itself, the bigger the oscillations and the more unstable it becomes. Just guessing.