In a few hours, the court hearing the Bradley Manning trial will be announcing the verdict. I'm sure we'll have plenty of commentary on the eventual decision, but it's worth noting this bit of ridiculousness. Senator Chuck Grassley is trying to get today declared National Whistleblower Day by Congress, in honor of the Constitutional Congress' very first whitleblower protection law, enacted on July 30, 1778.

As the article notes, Grassley has worked hard over the years to protect whistleblowers, but we recently wrote about his hypocrisy on the subject, passing a special law for a Swiss bank security guard who did more or less the same thing as Ed Snowden, while bashing Snowden for not facing a trial in the US. Congress just really has a knack for doing the exact wrong thing, don't they? If they want to actually support whistleblowers, they should support whistleblowers, not name a pointless day after them on the very same day that a high profile whistleblower likely finds out that he's going to spend much, if not all, of the rest of his life in jail.