How is it sending a message that leaking is "okay" when Manning is spending SEVEN years in jail for it?
If you look at the secrecy level of what was leaked, the actual effect it had, and Manning's reasons for doing it and mental state at the time, 35 years just seemed incredibly excessive. No one had ever served 35 years in prison for leaking shyt. And none of this shyt was even top secret, it was "secret" at best, and he clearly didn't do it to aid and abet the enemy. Hell, David Petraeus leaked and he didn't spend a single day in jail.
Manning served his 7 years in jail, that's more than enough for the crime, I got no problem with letting him out.
If Obama had pardoned him, or had commuted his sentence after a much smaller time served, it would be a different issue. But Obama made him sit there for his entire presidential term before he let him out. That's still some real shytty time. No one is going to leak shyt saying, "Hell, I'll only have to spend seven years in solitary".
p.s. - that isn't communicating my own position on leaking, I'm just saying that it's not hypocritical from a law-and-order standpoint.
