The statement below was read by Pfc. Bradley Manning at a providence inquiry for his formal plea of guilty to one specification as charged and nine specifications for lesser included offenses. He pled not guilty to 12 other specifications. This rush transcript was taken by journalist Alexa O’Brien at Thursday’s pretrial hearing. O’Brien provided Salon with the full transcript.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange addresses the media and supporters while British policemen stand outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Sunday.

After 18 months held in torturous conditions the swift hand of Justice has reached out to Bradley Manning… or at least it’s waving from a distance. On December 16th a preliminary hearing is scheduled where a military judge will determine if there is sufficient evidence to proceed with a court-martial. Manning faces over two dozen charges from disobeying an order to aiding the enemy. A request filed by Manning’s attorney is going to send a lot of us scrambling to brush up on current perjury law. Calling the first witness… President Barack Obama.

Florida resident and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee yesterday called for the execution of the person responsible for leaking hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

“Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty,” he said in an interview, a clip of which is posted on YouTube and which you can view in full after the jump.