My Politico column today on the newly fashionable Julian Assange:

Assange is now treated as a respectable figure by some elements of the right because he despises Hillary Clinton and promises to torpedo her campaign with new email exposures. Never mind that he has done everything within his power to damage the interests of the United States, in league with his quasi-ally, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Rarely has “strange new respect” been stranger.
It’s like conservatives embracing Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent who defected to the Soviet Union in the 1960s, if he promised to produce damaging information about LBJ before the 1964 election. Or welcoming Philip Agee, the anti-CIA activist from the 1970s who was allied with Russian and Cuban intelligence, if he demonstrated enough hostility to Jimmy Carter.
The enemy of my enemy (or more properly, my domestic political opponent) can still be a reprehensible creep, and that’s what Assange is.