Americans aren't used to the real news, as RT television explores in the above tape piece. Isn't it ironic that Russian television has to point out the obvious for us?

Not without reason, Assange fears being extradited to the U.S. on some cooked-up charges of treason or having stolen government documents, no matter that The New York Times and other publications have released the same cables as as WikiLeaks.

But the U.S. government is used to the country's media doing its bidding. Big media after all is big business, and we've seen how other big corporate players have rolled over to get their tummies rubbed by our statist daddy. Amazon, PayPal, possibly Twitter and now Mastercard have been quick to do the government's bidding,despite the fact that Assange has not been convicted or charged of any crime.

Columbia University even thoughtfully passed along a message from the State Department to its students: better not tweet or Facebook any support of WikiLeaks or it could cost you a future job with the government. Miraculously, Dean John H. Coatsworth nudged the Ivy League institution from its somnambulistic slumber and issued what Wired called a "ringing endorsement of free speech and academic freedom.''

“Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution,” Coatsworth wrote in an e-mail to the SIPA community. “Thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences.”

The delay in delivering that message captures the anemic response that America's elites have to the shrinking of our political rights, perhaps because Obama is one of them.

But we the people are guilty too. Who wants to think when it's so much more fun to fill up on toys and electronics and the illusion of freedom.