In a new video commentary at Fox News, Andrew Napolitano, a constitutional scholar and former New Jersey state judge, argues that instead of prosecuting Julian Assange of WikiLeaks for the exposure of United States military wrongdoing “we should be thanking him.” Pointing to the US Supreme Court backing the legality of media publishing the Pentagon Papers exposing US military secrets related to the Vietnam War, Napolitano further asserts that Assange, like publishers of the Pentagon Papers, is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

“The values underlying the First Amendment,” explains Napolitano, “are that the press should be free to expose all the government does, and whatever the press has in its hands — no matter how it acquired it — it is free to publish those materials as long as they are newsworthy, and no one can harm a hair on the head of anyone who does so.”

Watch Napolitano’s complete video commentary here:

Napolitano also discusses in his new editorial this week the US effort to prosecute Assange. Napolitano, who is an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul institute as well as the senior judicial analyst for Fox News, concludes his editorial with this thought-provoking statement:

Why was Assange indicted? Government killers are a mob, and mobs love anonymity. Assange assaulted their love by ending that anonymity. When the government kills and rejoices and lies about it in our names, we have a right to know of its behavior. Democracies spy on us all, yet they persist in punishing, to the ends of the earth, those who dare to shine a light upon them. Tyrannies do the same.

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.