Aug 13, 2013

One of America's first whistleblowers was in 1777. Some men exposed Commodore Hopkins, who was torturing British soldiers during the Revolutionary War. Hopkins sued, and Congress paid the expenses of the whistleblowers, saying,

“That it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States, as well as all other inhabitants thereof, to give the earliest information to Congress or any other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states, which may come to their knowledge.”

To show how much Obama and Congress are out of tune with the Constitution on the matters of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, praising the founders’ commitment to freedom of speech, wrote: “The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.”

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2013/08/12/whistle-blowers-use-to-be-american-patriots/