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This is nuts to me, and the timing of it is even crazier. I guess if you're going to spend the next 35 years of your life in a cell it should be as....No, sorry...I don't get it. His life as he knows it is totally over, WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?;-D

“As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me,” Manning said in a statement read during an exclusive TODAY show interview with lawyer David Coombs. “I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way I have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.” While Fort Leavenworth, the prison where Manning will serve her sentence, does not offer hormone therapy, Coombs told host Savannah Guthrie he would fight to ensure his client received the medical treatment she needed. He also said he and Manning...

Bradley Manning plans to live as a woman named Chelsea and wants to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible, the soldier said Thursday, a day after being sentenced to 35 years in prison for sending classified material to WikiLeaks. Manning announced the decision in a written statement provided to NBC's "Today" show, asking supporters to refer to him by his new name and the feminine pronoun. The statement was signed "Chelsea E. Manning." "As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female....

A U.S. reporter appearing on state-run television channel Russia Today on Wednesday to discuss the Bradley Manning verdict used his two minutes of airtime to protest Russia's anti-gay propaganda law and slam President Vladimir Putin. James Kirchik, who was speaking via video link from Stockholm with Russia Today news anchors, wore rainbow-colored suspenders on the air and began his speech by noting that "being silent in the face of evil is something we can't do." "So you know, being here on a Kremlin-funded propaganda network, I'm going to wear my gay pride suspenders and speak out against the horrific anti-gay...

White House would consider Manning pardon request By Justin Sink - 08/21/13 03:16 PM ET The White House said Wednesday that it would consider a clemency petition for Bradley Manning "like any other application" after the Army private was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking a cache of documents to WikiLeaks. "There's a process for pardon applications or clemency applications, I believe they're called," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "And I'm not going to get ahead of that process. If there is an application that's filed by Mr. Manning or his attorneys, that application will be considered...

So what if he disclosed information that potentially threatened American lives and security interests? Manning's a "frail guy who doesn't look threatening to anyone." So you have to question the length of his sentence. Such was the bizarre logic that Chris Matthews employed as he bemoaned Bradley Mannings' sentence--which could in practice see him freed in less than 10 years. Matthews was also moved by the fact that in military prison, Manning will be surrounded by people "who won't like him." View the video here.

FORT MEADE, Maryland-A U.S. military judge on Tuesday started considering the sentence of soldier Bradley Manning for the largest leak of classified information in the country's history - and she said it will be announced Wednesday morning.

Bradley Manning took the stand again on Wednesday and spoke for the second time in the more than three years since his arrest. This time, he said he was sorry. "I want to start off with an apology," Manning told the military judge in a brief two-minute statement. "I’m sorry that my actions hurt people. I’m sorry that they hurt the United States [...] I understood what I was doing, and decisions I made. However, I did not fully appreciate the broader effects of my actions." See also: Bradley Manning: the Movie? Manning delivered his statement during the last day...

A U.S. human rights group on Monday delivered a petition with more than 100,000 signatures urging that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize go to Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was convicted on espionage charges last month for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks. Norman Solomon, the co-founder of RootsAction, delivered the petition in Oslo, Norway, on Monday to the research director of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Prizes. Solomon said that Manning should receive the prize for exposing government secrecy and wrongdoing in the Iraq War. He argued that the Nobel committee’s selection of Manning...

U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning’s maximum prison sentence of 136 years was reduced to a maximum sentence of 90 years behind bars. Judge Denise Lind, an Army colonel, announced Manning’s reduced sentence during a closed session at Ft. Meade, Md., on Tuesday. Lind agreed in part to a motion proposed by the defense to merge various charges against Manning. “She merged two Espionage specifications for transmission of the Iraq and Afghan SigActs, the theft and transmission of the Guantanamo Bay Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs), Kerry, Hagel and Russians Will Meet

Following his conviction this week on at least five counts of espionage and several lesser charges, including fraud and theft, U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning will now do hard time in prison. In certain circumstances, spies deserve capital punishment. Several decades in jail strikes me being as Manning's criminal due, however. Treason rates the death sentence, but Manning didn't commit treason. In fact, he beat that rap. Manning admitted he gave Julian Assange's Wikileaks organization at least 700,000 pages of classified U.S. documents, as well as numerous classified videos. The massive document release included classified State Department cables and military...

It's reported that Bradley Manning has been found guilty of five counts of espionage and five counts of theft, all of which means a very long time in prison. And he deserves it. Ignore for the moment the fact that he's not been found guilty of aiding the enemy. They key thing here is that the court has, rightly, found him guilty of betraying his country. Lock him up and throw away the key. There are whistle-blowers and then there are traitors, and Bradley Manning falls into the latter category. Of course, there are also different categories of traitors and...

The U.S. Army soldier charged with providing troves of government documents to the whistleblowing website Wikileaks was found not guilty Tuesday of aiding the enemy, the top charge in his 22-count indictment, which could have carried a life sentence. [snip] Manning was convicted of 5 espionage counts

US ARMY PFC BRADLEY MANNING ACQUITTED OF AIDING THE ENEMY: AP

U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is a whistleblower who wanted to inform the American public about the troubling things he saw in the war zone, and the soldier is willing to pay the price for giving secrets to WikiLeaks, his defense attorney said Friday. During closing arguments, attorney David Coombs disputed what prosecutors said a day earlier, that Manning was a traitor whose only mission as an intelligence analyst was to give classified information to the anti-secrecy website and bask in the attention. “He’s not seeking attention. He saying he’s willing to accept the price” for what he has done,...

FORT MEADE, Md. – A military judge refused Thursday to dismiss the most serious charge against Bradley Manning, the Army private who gave reams of classified information to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. The charge of aiding the enemy that Manning faces is punishable by up to life in prison without parole. Col. Denise Lind, the judge in Manning's court-martial, denied defense requests to drop that charge and a computer fraud charge, ruling that the government had presented some evidence to support each element of the charges.

Snowden Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize After ‘Disrepute Incurred’ for Picking Obama By Andrew Johnson July 15, 2013 11:49 AM A Swedish professor has nominated NSA leaker Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize for his revelations of the surveillance program, but also to redeem the award’s prestige after it was awarded to President Obama in 2009. In his letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Umea University’s Stefan Svallfors argues that Snowden, who would be the award’s youngest winner at 30, exemplified that “individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.” Svallfors lauded Snowden’s “heroic effort at great personal...

Lawyers for the Army private who leaked a trove of classified government documents urged a judge Monday to dismiss a charge he aided the enemy, saying prosecutors failed to prove Pfc. Bradley Manning intended for the information to fall into enemy hands. The charge is the most serious and carries the most severe punishment—life in prison—in the case against Manning, who has acknowledged sending hundreds of thousands of documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. The trial of the 25-year-old Oklahoma native is drawing to a close on a military base outside Baltimore and a judge hearing the government’s case is...

WikiLeaks just threw some gasoline onto the conspiracy fire. On Wednesday night, they Tweeted: “Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.” What exactly are they trying to say? Michael Hastings was a much admired freelance journalist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to bring down General Stanley McChrystal. He was tragically killed this week in a car crash in Los Angeles, after his car hit a tree. Hastings is believed to have been alone in the vehicle. Hastings has certainly been in...