Welcome back. Private First Class Manning was sentenced on Tuesday to 35 years in prison for illegally leaking classified data.
If you have listened to me talk about the Manning and the Snowden leaks, you know that I am not a fan of the choices these folks made. There is a federal whistleblowing program that allows people to raise issues they feel amount to wrongdoing, get those issues investigated, get themselves immunity from reprisal, and minimize the damage to the United States. I strongly believe that both of these folks should have utilized the federal whistleblower program.

At the same time, when I look at the sentence handed down to Manning, I think it’s probably too harsh. I’ll get to that in a moment. You might have noticed that I have only used Manning’s last name and rank so far in this segment. The reason for that is that late this past week it was explained that Manning now identifies as a woman, Chelsea Manning, and that is how she wishes to be referred. That is how I will be referring to Manning for the rest of this piece, she is a woman whose name is now Chelsea Manning.

Chelsea Manning experienced abuse her entire life. Both of her parents were alcoholics, Mannings mother drank heavily while she was pregnant with Manning and a Navy psychiatrist has said that Manning’s facial features shows signs of fetal alcohol syndrome. Manning was often left alone at home for days and weeks at a time as a fairly young age...