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President Obama Commutes Chelsea Manning's Sentence (theverge.com)
The New York Times is reporting that President Obama has commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence. What this translates to is a reduced sentence for Manning, from 35 years to just over seven years. Since Manning has already served a majority of those years, she is due to be released from federal custody on May 17th. The Verge reports: While serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning leaked more than 700,000 documents to Wikileaks, including video of a 2007 airstrike in Baghdad that killed two Reuters employees. In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison for her role in the leak and has been held at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth for the past three years. Julian Assange, who has long been sought by U.S. and EU authorities for extradition on Swedish rape charges, had previously pledged to surrender himself to U.S. authorities if Manning was pardoned. Born Bradley Manning, Chelsea announced her gender transition the day after the verdict was handed down. "I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female," she said in a statement. "Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible." Obtaining the resulting medical treatments was extremely difficult for Manning, and was the subject of significant and sustained activism. After a lawsuit, Manning was approved for hormone therapy in 2015. In September 2016, she launched a hunger strike, demanding access to gender reassignment surgery; the military complied five days later.
Snowden should also be pardoned.
As for being able to make their case so the country can understand the issues, I suppose they could appear on talk shows. Write a book. Which then becomes a movie, er . . . oh, wait.
Even better would be if there had been legitimate channels where whistle blowers could have reported problems without fear of reprisals.
A pardon may not completely say that their acts were justified, but it at least gets them out of trouble.
The problem with a court proceeding is that it puts them back in jeopardy of whatever way the winds may blow in court.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Whistle blowing should not be considered treason. After seeing how other whistleblowers were treated, by the Obama administration, I can see why Snowden chose the actions he took. He was willing to give up his comfortable life to alert us all to a gigantic problem. One which has generated a huge amount of public debate. And has led to some actual reforms.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I believe Ford pre-emptively pardoned Nixon before any charges were filed.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
As long as they go to prison, sure, they can get a gender reassignment.
And I think you're off by a hair on your "millions" estimate. Male to female ranges from $7-$24,000. (source)
For reference, a new knee will cost about $50k. Technically a knee replacement is an elective surgery. How many of those were done to inmates last year? Should they be denied therapy as well? Or does gender reassignment bother you because it doesn't match your world view?
What special privilege is Chelsea asking for? She wants to be called by her gender (not biological sex; those are medically and legally different things). She's not asking to go to an all-girls high school or otherwise do anything controversial. In what remote sense does her request harm you in any way?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Does any of it matter? She wants to be referred to as "she", so unless you have some particular reason to be a asshat towards her why not just do it?
When talking to him directly? Sure, it's only polite to call him "her". Heck, I've been to enough cons - if someone wants to be a Klingon ship captain, sure, I'll play along if they're there and in costume. But they still aren't Klingon, and I'm not going to think of them as Klingon, or refer to them that way in normal conversation.
There's a quote sometimes attributed to Lincoln: "How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg? Four - doesn't matter what you call it, it's not a leg".
My sympathy towards anyone with a mistake belief about reality that interferes with their daily life - psychoses suck. But I'm not going to participate in their reality.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There's no known relationship between transgenderism, and delusions or psychoses. People with delusions tend to have a history of psychological problems and a spread of issues. Trans-folks, once you get over any bumps caused by repression or rejection, don't really have any of that. They have a straight-line, sometimes very strongly felt dysphoria. Calling it a delusion is to ignore all the detail of the phenomenon, which make you a bad nerd!
It's perfectly plausible that hormonal variations during development could cause this stuff - gendered body parts are month 2+, brain is month 6. If your testosterone levels fall off, or your mother is feeding anti-androgens in, etc, then you'll get male body, female brain.
It surprises me that people find this hard to get, when such hormonal variations cause plenty of other conditions. And it's not like "I think I'm female" is an unusual feeling - it's common to over half the world's population, and in the absence of foetal androgens, everyone would say it.