Treating raw milk farmers like whistle blowers in restricting court speech

The prosecutorial crackdown on raw milk in both Canada and the United States doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s part of a larger political context. For example, it’s sometime jarring to see echoes of raw milk trials in reports of such high profile cases as that of Bradley Manning, who is charged in connection with the release of sensitive material to Wikileaks. Reading Chris Hedges account of the legal maneuvering that went into setting the stage for Mannings trial triggered flashbacks of what went down for Vernon Herschberger in Wisconsin recently. Here’s a snippet of Manning’s story, from Truthdig.com:

“FORT MEADE, Md.—The military trial of Bradley Manning is a judicial lynching. The government has effectively muzzled the defense team. The Army private first class is not permitted to argue that he had a moral and legal obligation under international law to make public the war crimes he uncovered. The documents that detail the crimes, torture and killing Manning revealed, because they are classified, have been barred from discussion in court, effectively removing the fundamental issue of war crimes from the trial.