That's being done for a number of cars, with increasing amounts of aluminum, carbon fiber, even exotics like magnesium. Trick is that doing so is expensive and drives up the cost of the car.
And, as you say, it tends to be counter-acted by things like including a huge battery pack for hybrids, and even for non-hybrids you have the ever increasing numbers of air bags and such.
And of course there are many non-hybrid cars that get better mileage then many hybrids.
Which is why I mentioned the Ford Escape Hybrid up against 'any econobox'. There are small IC engined cars that beat Priuses in mpg, but they're not as common, and generally much more limited.
And yet they get no benefit despite being much more environmentally friendly.
Yep. If you rate them by gas mileage, a non-hybrid is more environmentally friendly than a hybrid. If you rate them by function, the hybrid will win IF the usage pattern favors hybrids - inner city driving, for example. If you're all highway a turbo-diesel will be better.
"hope there was nothing in the trunk" "thanks for the big empty cavity. That's not helpful"
Contradicting yourself a bit here. If you figure that you DON'T need to fold it when parked 100% of the time, not only is it more stable when expanded, it also has a surprising amount of trunk space available. Most people don't use 100% of their trunk space 100% of the time, going by the time I had a trunk I'd say 50%+ full about 15% of the time, otherwise 10% full. 100% full would be less than 1% of the time.
There's also the opportunity to fit more people via folding 'jump seats'.
So in this you get something that can be used as a commuter into the dense city, and still be used to haul groceries home. Just unload before you fold it up, and it should probably have sensors to tell you to empty the back first in case you forget.
College students. Aside from the occasional instant food, they eat out, often from a dining facility of some sort. Even if they buy food, they only have a tiny cube fridge, which is mostly reserved for beer. They have no children to need supplies for, etc... Their rooms come mostly pre-furnished, and delivery services for anything bigger are readily available, assuming they don't just buy it online and have it delivered that way.
1. You open it back up, or since it's likely the cargo space that folds, some sensor stops it. 2. Probably not, but worst case there should be an emergency release. Of course, it's just a prototype. 3. Probably not - the 13.6kwh battery pack is in the front bottom of the vehicle. It should be stable. 4. I figure that's what the cell phone control is for - folded it still has it's front wheels and those casters, so it should still be somewhat mobile. 5. You need actual wheels for 40 mph, but for a 1-5mph parking job? The castors will work just fine. Worst case, use you cell phone to release the brakes and push it out of the spot.
This reminds me of how California encouraged the use of hybrids and electric vehicles - they made it so that conforming vehicles had access to the HOV lanes even with only the driver.
This was an option worth several thousand dollars to many drivers, which combined with federal and state rebates made the vehicles very attractive to many buyers. Of course, it had the somewhat unattractive affect of allowing ANY hybrid - including relatively huge ones like the Ford Escape that still gets worse mileage than any non-hybrid econoboxes into them while disallowing said fuel-sipping traditionals.
I'm not a chemist, so I don't know precisely what it was in sweat that can set off their detectors (ammonia, maybe?), but for everyone's sake I hope TSA had some good hazmat disposal protocols for those things.
Wouldn't necessarily be the sweat itself, could have been something involved in the sock's material. Most explosive detectors look for a number of things, but nitrates is the big one. As the wiki page mentions, they can be detected in solution(don't need much) via an electrode, thus making a test for it quick&easy.
One option is that maybe he ran through a freshly fertilized field and picked up enough to set the detector off.
This is where the term Transgender needs to be understood way more. You see, it appears you are calling her a 'he' because he has not went through HRT or SRS yet.. which neither are required by National or International standards to declare official Gender Dysphoria diagnosis. Gender Identity, Role, and even Gender Sexual Response is predominately all in the mind, not between the legs.
This assumes I care about 'national or international standards'.
You can get a official declaration of Gender Dysphoria all you like. I still won't call what your mental gender until you start making serious moves to transition. The diagnosis means you can start. Once you're somewhere into the process I'll switch. Don't really know when; hasn't come up yet.
Openly gay married commander, remember? You don't think I know that?
It's happening, but it's been being fought from the highest levels. We're basically having to wait for enough of the 'old guard' to retire to actually make change. The fight for gay rights was so intense*, it's going to be quite a while for trans to gain acceptance.
*Though mostly in congress/courts. They would have gotten benefits a lot quicker if it hadn't been for DOMA. DADT and the ban on gays in the military before that were policies placed upon the DoD by congress; it wasn't developed by us.
Of course not! They don't want to use some tool specific to the user's security system. They'd much rather just slurp the contents of the phone remotely through the carrier.
"Many states"? I'd say ALL states. It's a federal level felony conviction. BCD might have confinement beforehand - but the question there is 'how long'? Remember, the standard rule is that felonies are possible confinement of more than a year, misdemeanors a year or less. And yes, even at that standard you can commit some very serious crimes.
The mapping isn't exact, no, but like I said, that's my non-lawyer understanding of it.
The thing I can't understand is if the cross bracing is used to improve the partial tests why won't it stop too fast in the full frontal test.
The amount of cross bracing required to spread the partial impact across the whole front crumple zone would render the crumple zone completely rigid.
Ever worked with a collapsing stand? A brace can be designed to be strong enough to hold an elephant from one direction, yet collapse with a push of a finger in another. Just design the brace to provide strength side to side on the car, not lengthwise. It doesn't have to provide structural strength/resistance to impact. What I'm picturing them being used for is to transfer force. Picture two lines that represent the sides of the car. When an impact occurs, the lines collapse depending on the impact forces and their strength. Their strength is calibrated to protect the passengers up to a impact of X velocity, more or less without injury.
Obviously if you only impact ONE of these lines with the same amount of force it'll collapse faster. If you used the full distance for the prior test, the whole line will collapse, indicating penetration into the cabin and injury to passengers. If you fatten up the lines to the point that only 1 line is sufficient for the impact, an impact against 2 will result in too much shock to the cabin.
So let's add some bracing - put an X attaching from the front of the lines to about the midpoint of the opposite. Heck, you can have a number of such X's running the length. Now run the simulation again - when both lines are hit with equal impact, they collapse equally and the bracing does nothing. But if only 1 is hit, once the one line collapses to the point that it hits the bottom of an X, it has to start dragging the 2nd line with it, transferring impact energy to the other side of the vehicle. BTW, the bracing is designed to be strong tensile(pulling), not compressive force(pushing). It'll collapse easy, but pull hard. The second line will probably bend sideways, but this is still an opportunity to dump energy and can be designed for.
If you look at the video of the crash test you see that up to the front wheels is crushed which is where the frame starts there is not a lot of crumple space left, so I'm assuming they don't have much energy absorption left.
You haven't seen enough crash images of modern cars then. I've seen images of 'walk away once they cut you out' accidents where the wheels(and engine) had been pushed underneath the cabin. If the front wheels are still mostly in the proper spot they have like 2' left.
Take, for example, how the Volvo S60 did. Now, not the same test(still looking), but note how the wheel comes completely off. Want the no offset picture?
Also, small overlap test seems to be more about having the car push itself sideways a bit, keeping the cabin out of the impact, but allowing it to proceed past the impact point.
Also, found this: "Tesla determined it would meet the NHTSA front crash test with a 5-star rating and “Tesla then analyzed the Model S to determine the weakest points in the car and retested at those locations until the car achieved 5 stars no matter how the test equipment was configured.” In other words, Tesla expects to perform at a 5-star level no matter how much or little offset in the actual crash. Or better."
Heh, missed the original post and thought "Androgen insensitivity is still biological!", but went back and saw the AC mentioned 'determined by DNA', so you have a point.;)
Yes, I'll consider a person with total androgen insensitivity a woman. It can be more complicated if the insensitivity isn't total, there's a surprising amount of grey area.
I'll just chime in that while it's probably 45% of jobs TOTAL, a BCD(Bad Conduct Discharge) is different and actually better than a Dishonorable. Most of them fixed on the point that people with one are felons, so any positions that ban felons also ban DDs.
A BCD is a misdemeanor level discharge, a DD is a felony level. I'm not a military lawyer, but that's how I understand it.
As for hormone therapy, I could have sworn I've heard of people getting that in jail before as well.
The critical point here is state vs federal, and DoD federal at that. Remember, it hasn't actually been that long since DOMA was struck down, or the end of DADT. Lacking precedent, it's going to be a uphill fight for Manning to get that. Unlike integration, the DoD has been fighting anything hinting of gay/tran tooth and nail.
What about France, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Israel, etc...?
Oh, and it's five US prisons. ADX Florence, Riker Island, San Quentin, Alcatraz, and Attica. Did you review the list? The including of US prison ADX Florence Supermax looks sterile, compared to the preceding burned & gutted cell in Venezuela and followed by a picture of blindfolded inmates in a Syrian prison which had 2.4k inmates executed 3 decades ago.
I have to say that I question the 'merits' by which US prisons are on the list. 'Many suicides' doesn't really have the bite of '2.4k executed by presidential order', or '111 killed in a riot'. Heck, San Quentin mentions that it holds 4k prisoners and has the largest death row in the USA, but doesn't mention WHY it's otherwise among the worst prisons in the world. I'd have to say that US prisons probably made the list more due to ease of research and the need to have 'USA' in there somewhere. They even had to reach further back into the past.
Also, multiple prisons from Venezuela, Brazil and elsewhere are on the list
some deep rooted psychological scar from being in the armed forces.
I'm going to say that he was screwed up before ever entering the military; being in the military certainly didn't help though. One of the signs was that he was placed in a discharge unit. If his commanding officers had made the call he would have been kicked out and be free to transition today.
Please note: I'm active duty and have an openly gay married* commander. I won't say that he hasn't had problems in his career, it having very much started during 'don't ask don't tell', but he hasn't been having problems with us.
But at the same time I'm NOT going to make like the military is some utopia for trans people. It's much better for gay people, but I would state that as a category the US military is currently NOT a place you want to be if you want to transition. Bradley Manning will probably not be allowed to transition during his time at Leavenworth. The DoD just doesn't have any measures to allow it, which means that people would have to take the effort to do so.
As a general matter, if you want to transition and you're in the military, your best option is to keep quiet and let your enlistment run out. If you're really desperate, there are a number of ways to get out quicker. A bit tougher since DADT ended, but there are still ways. You might lose some benefits, but there's plenty of things you can do where the military will decide to discharge you to be rid of you and not do much else.
(BTW, I go by a '2 out of 3' standard: mental, physical outward, and DNA; he hasn't started transition yet so he's still a he).
*I wrote it this way because I've known gay people who married the opposite gender for various reasons.
Yes, that's what was happening - the Chinese were willfully BUYING it, trying to make money by recycling it.
Indeed, and like many other industries, they made themselves the most profitable disposal choice to the point that US recycling options either shut down due to it not being profitable or are pathetically undersized for the load now that China has left the business(somewhat). Options to dispose of the stuff domestically will pop up, it'll just take some time.
Because coal power plants are made for coal, not plastic.
With the caveat that coal plants vary wildly technology wise, I'll point out that plastic contains more energy per pound than gasoline. It's extremely possible to burn plastic in *most* coal plants to reduce the amount of coal needed as well as pollution(both by not sending the plastic to the dump and reducing air pollution from the coal).
You just need a proper shredder and keep the proportions of plastic/paper/other burnables to coal within limits. The more efficient the coal plant, the higher the temperature it burns at, the better.
Which is still a shitload of time to have to sit in a prison cell, particularly if he's really trans and they won't let him transition.
My first thought on this was: Then maybe he shouldn't have released the information; in which case he'd have been out in less than 2 years. Depending on how long he enlisted for, he'd have been out in 2012(4 year enlistment) to 2014(6 year), with the GI bill, VA benefits, etc...
Per the article, hasn't the sentence already been decided at 'life in prison'? The only question now is whether or not he'll ever be eligible for parole. His being eligible for parole in a decade if it's allowed is part of the administration details - it's how the military parole system is set up, it doesn't consider Bales specifically.
My sense of justice is that he never gets parole, or if he does manage it that it doesn't come for at least 60 years.
1. UCMJ isn't 'notionally' under the constitution. It's completely under the constitution. 2. UCMJ trials aren't actually harsher than civilian courts. Consider how long it's been since somebody was sentenced to death under the UCMJ, as opposed to federal or even state courts. 3. You keep your rights even as a soldier. 4. Murder/rape trials - can you cite a source on this? I thought kidnapping charges were fairly commonly associated with rape charges. Besides, you only need to be convicted of 1 count of aggravated murder in order to be sentenced to death/life in prison. It's not the severity of the act that gets you multiple charges, it's complex behavior. Murder, in the end, can be extremely simple. 5. 'Major Counts' can be misleading. As I said in #3, the penalty for murder is so severe that if Manning had murdered somebody in the course of his thefts all the espionage, fraud, theft, and such would be minor counts.
Did they find explicit evidence that a document was NOT evidence of a war crime? Given the weight of documents that WERE evidence of such, is the release of the other documents excusable?
1. Yes. Those diplomatic cables? A number were the equivalent of personal dossiers on various foreign diplomats and VIPs containing information on how to best approach them and keep them happy. Some were not the most professionally worded. One I remember boiled down to 'This guy stinks like an open sewer, but he's still a VIP, smile at him and don't bring it up'. 2. The massive weight of documents did not involve war crimes.
Putative war crimes coverup issues were not at issue. Venue of release was not at issue. "He disclosed things we wanted kept secret" was the only issue that the prosecutors were concerned with.
And this approach was enabled by Manning not reviewing the documents he released. If he had only released half a dozen documents about war crimes, it would have been a very different trial.
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That's being done for a number of cars, with increasing amounts of aluminum, carbon fiber, even exotics like magnesium. Trick is that doing so is expensive and drives up the cost of the car.
And, as you say, it tends to be counter-acted by things like including a huge battery pack for hybrids, and even for non-hybrids you have the ever increasing numbers of air bags and such.
And of course there are many non-hybrid cars that get better mileage then many hybrids.
Which is why I mentioned the Ford Escape Hybrid up against 'any econobox'. There are small IC engined cars that beat Priuses in mpg, but they're not as common, and generally much more limited.
And yet they get no benefit despite being much more environmentally friendly.
Yep. If you rate them by gas mileage, a non-hybrid is more environmentally friendly than a hybrid. If you rate them by function, the hybrid will win IF the usage pattern favors hybrids - inner city driving, for example. If you're all highway a turbo-diesel will be better.
"hope there was nothing in the trunk"
"thanks for the big empty cavity. That's not helpful"
Contradicting yourself a bit here. If you figure that you DON'T need to fold it when parked 100% of the time, not only is it more stable when expanded, it also has a surprising amount of trunk space available. Most people don't use 100% of their trunk space 100% of the time, going by the time I had a trunk I'd say 50%+ full about 15% of the time, otherwise 10% full. 100% full would be less than 1% of the time.
There's also the opportunity to fit more people via folding 'jump seats'.
So in this you get something that can be used as a commuter into the dense city, and still be used to haul groceries home. Just unload before you fold it up, and it should probably have sensors to tell you to empty the back first in case you forget.
I wonder about the lifestyle of these designers.
College students. Aside from the occasional instant food, they eat out, often from a dining facility of some sort. Even if they buy food, they only have a tiny cube fridge, which is mostly reserved for beer. They have no children to need supplies for, etc... Their rooms come mostly pre-furnished, and delivery services for anything bigger are readily available, assuming they don't just buy it online and have it delivered that way.
1. You open it back up, or since it's likely the cargo space that folds, some sensor stops it.
2. Probably not, but worst case there should be an emergency release. Of course, it's just a prototype.
3. Probably not - the 13.6kwh battery pack is in the front bottom of the vehicle. It should be stable.
4. I figure that's what the cell phone control is for - folded it still has it's front wheels and those casters, so it should still be somewhat mobile.
5. You need actual wheels for 40 mph, but for a 1-5mph parking job? The castors will work just fine. Worst case, use you cell phone to release the brakes and push it out of the spot.
This reminds me of how California encouraged the use of hybrids and electric vehicles - they made it so that conforming vehicles had access to the HOV lanes even with only the driver.
This was an option worth several thousand dollars to many drivers, which combined with federal and state rebates made the vehicles very attractive to many buyers. Of course, it had the somewhat unattractive affect of allowing ANY hybrid - including relatively huge ones like the Ford Escape that still gets worse mileage than any non-hybrid econoboxes into them while disallowing said fuel-sipping traditionals.
I'm not a chemist, so I don't know precisely what it was in sweat that can set off their detectors (ammonia, maybe?), but for everyone's sake I hope TSA had some good hazmat disposal protocols for those things.
Wouldn't necessarily be the sweat itself, could have been something involved in the sock's material. Most explosive detectors look for a number of things, but nitrates is the big one. As the wiki page mentions, they can be detected in solution(don't need much) via an electrode, thus making a test for it quick&easy.
One option is that maybe he ran through a freshly fertilized field and picked up enough to set the detector off.
This is where the term Transgender needs to be understood way more. You see, it appears you are calling her a 'he' because he has not went through HRT or SRS yet.. which neither are required by National or International standards to declare official Gender Dysphoria diagnosis. Gender Identity, Role, and even Gender Sexual Response is predominately all in the mind, not between the legs.
This assumes I care about 'national or international standards'.
You can get a official declaration of Gender Dysphoria all you like. I still won't call what your mental gender until you start making serious moves to transition. The diagnosis means you can start. Once you're somewhere into the process I'll switch. Don't really know when; hasn't come up yet.
Openly gay married commander, remember? You don't think I know that?
It's happening, but it's been being fought from the highest levels. We're basically having to wait for enough of the 'old guard' to retire to actually make change. The fight for gay rights was so intense*, it's going to be quite a while for trans to gain acceptance.
*Though mostly in congress/courts. They would have gotten benefits a lot quicker if it hadn't been for DOMA. DADT and the ban on gays in the military before that were policies placed upon the DoD by congress; it wasn't developed by us.
Of course not! They don't want to use some tool specific to the user's security system. They'd much rather just slurp the contents of the phone remotely through the carrier.
"Many states"? I'd say ALL states. It's a federal level felony conviction. BCD might have confinement beforehand - but the question there is 'how long'? Remember, the standard rule is that felonies are possible confinement of more than a year, misdemeanors a year or less. And yes, even at that standard you can commit some very serious crimes.
The mapping isn't exact, no, but like I said, that's my non-lawyer understanding of it.
The thing I can't understand is if the cross bracing is used to improve the partial tests why won't it stop too fast in the full frontal test.
The amount of cross bracing required to spread the partial impact across the whole front crumple zone would render the crumple zone completely rigid.
Ever worked with a collapsing stand? A brace can be designed to be strong enough to hold an elephant from one direction, yet collapse with a push of a finger in another. Just design the brace to provide strength side to side on the car, not lengthwise. It doesn't have to provide structural strength/resistance to impact. What I'm picturing them being used for is to transfer force. Picture two lines that represent the sides of the car. When an impact occurs, the lines collapse depending on the impact forces and their strength. Their strength is calibrated to protect the passengers up to a impact of X velocity, more or less without injury.
Obviously if you only impact ONE of these lines with the same amount of force it'll collapse faster. If you used the full distance for the prior test, the whole line will collapse, indicating penetration into the cabin and injury to passengers. If you fatten up the lines to the point that only 1 line is sufficient for the impact, an impact against 2 will result in too much shock to the cabin.
So let's add some bracing - put an X attaching from the front of the lines to about the midpoint of the opposite. Heck, you can have a number of such X's running the length. Now run the simulation again - when both lines are hit with equal impact, they collapse equally and the bracing does nothing. But if only 1 is hit, once the one line collapses to the point that it hits the bottom of an X, it has to start dragging the 2nd line with it, transferring impact energy to the other side of the vehicle. BTW, the bracing is designed to be strong tensile(pulling), not compressive force(pushing). It'll collapse easy, but pull hard. The second line will probably bend sideways, but this is still an opportunity to dump energy and can be designed for.
If you look at the video of the crash test you see that up to the front wheels is crushed which is where the frame starts there is not a lot of crumple space left, so I'm assuming they don't have much energy absorption left.
You haven't seen enough crash images of modern cars then. I've seen images of 'walk away once they cut you out' accidents where the wheels(and engine) had been pushed underneath the cabin. If the front wheels are still mostly in the proper spot they have like 2' left.
Take, for example, how the Volvo S60 did. Now, not the same test(still looking), but note how the wheel comes completely off. Want the no offset picture?
Also, small overlap test seems to be more about having the car push itself sideways a bit, keeping the cabin out of the impact, but allowing it to proceed past the impact point.
Also, found this: "Tesla determined it would meet the NHTSA front crash test with a 5-star rating and “Tesla then analyzed the Model S to determine the weakest points in the car and retested at those locations until the car achieved 5 stars no matter how the test equipment was configured.” In other words, Tesla expects to perform at a 5-star level no matter how much or little offset in the actual crash. Or better."
Heh, missed the original post and thought "Androgen insensitivity is still biological!", but went back and saw the AC mentioned 'determined by DNA', so you have a point. ;)
Yes, I'll consider a person with total androgen insensitivity a woman. It can be more complicated if the insensitivity isn't total, there's a surprising amount of grey area.
I'll just chime in that while it's probably 45% of jobs TOTAL, a BCD(Bad Conduct Discharge) is different and actually better than a Dishonorable. Most of them fixed on the point that people with one are felons, so any positions that ban felons also ban DDs.
A BCD is a misdemeanor level discharge, a DD is a felony level. I'm not a military lawyer, but that's how I understand it.
As for hormone therapy, I could have sworn I've heard of people getting that in jail before as well.
The critical point here is state vs federal, and DoD federal at that. Remember, it hasn't actually been that long since DOMA was struck down, or the end of DADT. Lacking precedent, it's going to be a uphill fight for Manning to get that. Unlike integration, the DoD has been fighting anything hinting of gay/tran tooth and nail.
What about France, Hong Kong, Venezuela, Israel, etc...?
Oh, and it's five US prisons. ADX Florence, Riker Island, San Quentin, Alcatraz, and Attica. Did you review the list? The including of US prison ADX Florence Supermax looks sterile, compared to the preceding burned & gutted cell in Venezuela and followed by a picture of blindfolded inmates in a Syrian prison which had 2.4k inmates executed 3 decades ago.
I have to say that I question the 'merits' by which US prisons are on the list. 'Many suicides' doesn't really have the bite of '2.4k executed by presidential order', or '111 killed in a riot'. Heck, San Quentin mentions that it holds 4k prisoners and has the largest death row in the USA, but doesn't mention WHY it's otherwise among the worst prisons in the world. I'd have to say that US prisons probably made the list more due to ease of research and the need to have 'USA' in there somewhere. They even had to reach further back into the past.
Also, multiple prisons from Venezuela, Brazil and elsewhere are on the list
some deep rooted psychological scar from being in the armed forces.
I'm going to say that he was screwed up before ever entering the military; being in the military certainly didn't help though. One of the signs was that he was placed in a discharge unit. If his commanding officers had made the call he would have been kicked out and be free to transition today.
Please note: I'm active duty and have an openly gay married* commander. I won't say that he hasn't had problems in his career, it having very much started during 'don't ask don't tell', but he hasn't been having problems with us.
But at the same time I'm NOT going to make like the military is some utopia for trans people. It's much better for gay people, but I would state that as a category the US military is currently NOT a place you want to be if you want to transition. Bradley Manning will probably not be allowed to transition during his time at Leavenworth. The DoD just doesn't have any measures to allow it, which means that people would have to take the effort to do so.
As a general matter, if you want to transition and you're in the military, your best option is to keep quiet and let your enlistment run out. If you're really desperate, there are a number of ways to get out quicker. A bit tougher since DADT ended, but there are still ways. You might lose some benefits, but there's plenty of things you can do where the military will decide to discharge you to be rid of you and not do much else.
(BTW, I go by a '2 out of 3' standard: mental, physical outward, and DNA; he hasn't started transition yet so he's still a he).
*I wrote it this way because I've known gay people who married the opposite gender for various reasons.
So they actually composted for you?
Consumer reports found the bags completely intact after 13 weeks in a standard compost heap.
Yes, that's what was happening - the Chinese were willfully BUYING it, trying to make money by recycling it.
Indeed, and like many other industries, they made themselves the most profitable disposal choice to the point that US recycling options either shut down due to it not being profitable or are pathetically undersized for the load now that China has left the business(somewhat). Options to dispose of the stuff domestically will pop up, it'll just take some time.
Because coal power plants are made for coal, not plastic.
With the caveat that coal plants vary wildly technology wise, I'll point out that plastic contains more energy per pound than gasoline. It's extremely possible to burn plastic in *most* coal plants to reduce the amount of coal needed as well as pollution(both by not sending the plastic to the dump and reducing air pollution from the coal).
You just need a proper shredder and keep the proportions of plastic/paper/other burnables to coal within limits. The more efficient the coal plant, the higher the temperature it burns at, the better.
Which is still a shitload of time to have to sit in a prison cell, particularly if he's really trans and they won't let him transition.
My first thought on this was: Then maybe he shouldn't have released the information; in which case he'd have been out in less than 2 years. Depending on how long he enlisted for, he'd have been out in 2012(4 year enlistment) to 2014(6 year), with the GI bill, VA benefits, etc...
Per the article, hasn't the sentence already been decided at 'life in prison'? The only question now is whether or not he'll ever be eligible for parole. His being eligible for parole in a decade if it's allowed is part of the administration details - it's how the military parole system is set up, it doesn't consider Bales specifically.
My sense of justice is that he never gets parole, or if he does manage it that it doesn't come for at least 60 years.
1. UCMJ isn't 'notionally' under the constitution. It's completely under the constitution.
2. UCMJ trials aren't actually harsher than civilian courts. Consider how long it's been since somebody was sentenced to death under the UCMJ, as opposed to federal or even state courts.
3. You keep your rights even as a soldier.
4. Murder/rape trials - can you cite a source on this? I thought kidnapping charges were fairly commonly associated with rape charges. Besides, you only need to be convicted of 1 count of aggravated murder in order to be sentenced to death/life in prison. It's not the severity of the act that gets you multiple charges, it's complex behavior. Murder, in the end, can be extremely simple.
5. 'Major Counts' can be misleading. As I said in #3, the penalty for murder is so severe that if Manning had murdered somebody in the course of his thefts all the espionage, fraud, theft, and such would be minor counts.
he is a powerful, powerful symbol.
Of what happens if you improperly release classified information/squeal.
I predict he'll be mostly forgotten about within 2 years.
Did they find explicit evidence that a document was NOT evidence of a war crime? Given the weight of documents that WERE evidence of such, is the release of the other documents excusable?
1. Yes. Those diplomatic cables? A number were the equivalent of personal dossiers on various foreign diplomats and VIPs containing information on how to best approach them and keep them happy. Some were not the most professionally worded. One I remember boiled down to 'This guy stinks like an open sewer, but he's still a VIP, smile at him and don't bring it up'.
2. The massive weight of documents did not involve war crimes.
Putative war crimes coverup issues were not at issue. Venue of release was not at issue. "He disclosed things we wanted kept secret" was the only issue that the prosecutors were concerned with.
And this approach was enabled by Manning not reviewing the documents he released. If he had only released half a dozen documents about war crimes, it would have been a very different trial.