Gerstein reports:

A prominent consitutional scholar and former official of President Barack Obama's Justice Department, Laurence Tribe, is decrying the Pentagon's treatment of Wikileaks suspect Pvt. Bradley Manning in a Virginia brig.

Tribe, a Harvard law professor who served as an adviser on access-to-justice issues at the Justice Department, was one of more than 250 lawyers, law professors and prominent authors who signed a letter calling Manning's treatment "illegal and immoral." The letter of protest was published recently in the New York Review of Books.

Tribe told Britain's Guardian newspaper that conditions of Manning's detention are "not only shameful but unconstitutional." Manning's supporters have complained that he is being held in what amounts to solitary confinement and that he's been subjected to punitive orders, such as being required to sleep naked overnight.