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Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning

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Re: Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning

#3

If Obama only pardons one person (hopefully unlikely) Chelsea is by far the correct choice imo. She did a great service to the world and has been horribly mistreated by the prison system for it.

I disagree, I think you can draw a straight line from him to the election of Donald Trump.

The one sided, anti-us nature of WikiLeaks, including perhaps incomplete content, hint at editorial digression with a clear motivation.

I can't come up with a single way this helped America, but it certainly hurt our prestige around the world.

Re: Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning

#4

If Obama only pardons one person (hopefully unlikely) Chelsea is by far the correct choice imo. She did a great service to the world and has been horribly mistreated by the prison system for it.

What great service did he do?

And mistreated? Perhaps, but not any more, and certainly quite less given the media scrutiny, than any generic prisoner.

There are plenty of more deserving souls out there, people like this -

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/mom-of-young-man-jail...

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/5lc9z3/justice_dept_l...

Or intervene on behalf of people who take a deal for the sake of not being able to defend themselves.

http://www.innocenceproject.org

Re: Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning

#5

If Obama only pardons one person (hopefully unlikely) Chelsea is by far the correct choice imo. She did a great service to the world and has been horribly mistreated by the prison system for it.

I disagree, I think you can draw a straight line from him to the election of Donald Trump. The one sided, anti-us nature of WikiLeaks, including perhaps incomplete content, hint at editorial digression with a clear motivation. I can't come up with a single way this helped America, but it certainly hurt our prestige around the world.

The US wasn't founded to serve as a beacon of prestige. The point of the government has more to do with its obligations to, and relationship with, its people.

Re: Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning

#6
I predict suicide within 5 years of pardon.

Manning has such an odd personality, it's hard to discern how much is the person and how much is the influence of the extraordinary circumstances swirling around the individual.

The really strange part in all this is whether preventing suicide through incarceration is at all ethical.

What kind of acceptance and support awaits Manning upon being granted freedom? Can a post-pardon suicide be prevented?

Re: Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning

#8

If Obama only pardons one person (hopefully unlikely) Chelsea is by far the correct choice imo. She did a great service to the world and has been horribly mistreated by the prison system for it.

I disagree, I think you can draw a straight line from him to the election of Donald Trump. The one sided, anti-us nature of WikiLeaks, including perhaps incomplete content, hint at editorial digression with a clear motivation. I can't come up with a single way this helped America, but it certainly hurt our prestige around the world.

Did you maybe mean anti-us nature of US foreign policy?

Re: Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning

#9

If Obama only pardons one person (hopefully unlikely) Chelsea is by far the correct choice imo. She did a great service to the world and has been horribly mistreated by the prison system for it.

I disagree, I think you can draw a straight line from him to the election of Donald Trump. The one sided, anti-us nature of WikiLeaks, including perhaps incomplete content, hint at editorial digression with a clear motivation. I can't come up with a single way this helped America, but it certainly hurt our prestige around the world.

There's a bit of cognitive dissonance in your claims.

America's prestige was destroyed by none other than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremmer, Rupert Murdoch, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and several others, for a number of reasons, but most of all the 2003 invasion of Iraq, from which you can draw a straight line to ISIS.

How you "connect the dots" and manage to wander your way from Manning and land on Trump is beyond me. How you digress from WikiLeaks to Trump is curious.

Political influence may have elected Trump, but cones of silence, echo chambers and hacker mudslinging isn't really what got Trump elected.

Republican incompetence permitted his candidacy in the first place. Republican spite invoking a broad mistrust among suburbanites and rural America put him in office. If the people who voted Trump, are so easily deceived by falsified evidence and dubious non-journalism, then they were stupid enough to be deceived by anything, but wanted to be spiteful and hate something, and would have found something dubious to latch onto and excuse their shitty vote anyway.

Re: Obama is seriously considering a pardon for Chelsea Manning

#10
Presidential pardons are corrupt by definition. They transgress the rule of law and equality before it. If you think someone needs a presidential pardon, just back up and think "which law is horrible and unjust and must be reformed." If not the law maybe the courts. Pardon at best is a fig leaf over a gaping wound. At worst, well pick them out yourself - the best you can say about it is that it looks really, really bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controvers...

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