WikiLeaks Founder Attacks the United States

One of the “top stories” in the newspaper these days is that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been granted asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, and has commenced his efforts to end the United States’ “war on whistleblowers.” He argues that the American soldier who released top-secret information to him is “a hero.” I guess that makes WikiLeaks a “double hero” for publishing to the world information that it also knew was top secret. Assange suggested that this was a freedom of the press issue and that “journalists [will] fall silent under fear of prosecution.” His own fear of prosecution, he conveniently overlooks, is for sexually assaulting two women in Sweden, and it is Sweden, not the United States, who seeks to extradite him.

Why is such tripe even newsworthy? A sex offender who defends himself on the basis that he is being discriminated against for publishing top-secret information! Am I missing something here?