If the condom breaks, it's gotta be rape.

Sitting in a doctor's waiting room for three hours yesterday morning, I had to listen to "Liberal" CNN chewing endlessly on the two stories of the morning: the terminal illness of Elizabeth Edwards and the sex crimes of Julian Assange. Whatever your opinion of the man and of Wikileaks; whether it's black and white or very mixed, as mine is, I think we have to disassociate the propriety of publishing government communications with what just might be another US government inspired crime of equivocation and slander.

CNN used the word rape, more times than I could count yesterday and true to their unjournalistic habits never once proposed to delve into exactly what acts, according to Swedish Law, the alleged rape of two " consenting" women consisted of, although they did establish the need to do so by repeating that both women had willingly had sex with the man from Wiki. A disturbing dissonance at least. It appears that in Sweden, it's rape, or more accurately even if more peculiar: "sex by surprise" not to use a condom, or even if the condom breaks, according to Swedish prosecutors. That's it and that means there are a hell of a lot of rapists out there, many of whom are gloating over the imprisonment of Mr. Assange for something that's a crime nowhere but Sweden. Even in that feminist paradise, it's only a $750. fine. So why is theUS so hell bent on extraditing him for something on the order of a speeding ticket and why are the media so intent on calling him a rapist?

So I'm going to suggest, in full expectation of the customary response, a conspiracy. It's not just that CNN and others are crying rape when it isn't, but CNN and others would have us completely oblivious to the identities of the willing but uncondomized women as though it didn't matter that they both may have ties to the US government, the CIA and organizations supported by them.

Is this another of the seemingly endless appeals to the end sanctifying the means and if so, can we call ourselves a free country when the laws are bent, spindled, folded and mutilated to create the crime? With all the synthetic furor in some conservative states, about applying foreign laws in the US, are the same conservatives gleefully doing just that in order to more readily conceal shady dealings? Can we call that rape too?

No, I'm not sure that Assenge was doing anyone a favor by revealing sensitive targets for terrorists, and if he was guilty of that, he's certainly no friend to the US, but the practice of trumping up charges and paying witnesses to make them is not new here and certainly not a foreign practice to political parties trying to cripple an opposing president, but there's a certain foul odor pervading the news reports and it's not just the smell of spilled beans. If one thing is sure, it's that we need some fresh air here and some real information before we can conclude that our "free" press is worth saving.