The press and free speech landscape has totally changed. There is far less news reporting today. Instead, we have this endless stream of - largely meaningless and speculative - analysis by sideline commentators and self-proclaimed "experts."

On a transparency front, I would say that I certainly dream of a world in which our local, state, and national and international governments and other organizations have a 21st century, digital-era transparency built into them by default.

I think that the next two generations of Americans will be grappling with the very real specter of finding themselves living in a new and bizarre kind of digital totalitarian state - one that looks and feels democratic on the surface, but has a fierce undercurrent of fear and technologically enforced fascism any time you step out of line. I really hope this isn't the case, but it looks really bad right now, doesn't it?

I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.

As a young kid, I spent a lot of time exploring the world around me.

Even if I didn't have the support that I have, I would still be fighting the same fights, and I would still be the same person that I am today.

As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan.