Not being at all sarcastic when I say this, but it'd be great if President Obama, who ran on a campaign of transparancy, would seriously step in and pardon this guy.
Yeah, that's not gonna happen. It SHOULD, but it won't.
He has found himself, ironically, in the same situation that many Republicans found themselves in when they were attacking him leading up to 2008.
Back then you had all these Republicans going on and on about how Obama is Satan himself, he wants to kill your grandmother, he's secretly a Muslim who sympathizes with the Terrorists. If he gets his way he's gonna bring about the downfall of American Civilization and this will become some Kenyan Muslim Socialist Fascist state that has elements of Marxism everywhere.
So then when he WON, they had painted themselves into a corner where they could NEVER compromise and work with him, because how could they? They'd just spent a year explaining how anything this man does would destroy everything you hold sacred. For you to turn around and work with someone who you said would destroy everything if he got his policies passed, well...that wouldn't go over well for their constituents.
Kind of hard to work with someone that explicitly states that his #1 goal is to make him a one term President.
Now Obama has done that to himself as it relates to Manning. The Administration has made sure that Manning has been labeled a traitor, not a whistleblower, has painted him in the worst light, talked about how supposedly all these people were put in danger or whatever based on what he did, when there is no evidence of that, and on and on and on.
So for him to NOW come out and say, "Alright, I pardon Bradley Manning", that would just open him up to so much criticism, and we've all seen how he bends over backwards for the Republicans to not criticize him, as if they would ever NOT do so no matter what he does.
So yeah, he's not gonna pardon him, but that was a nice little humorous idea that they threw out. smh.
I voted for Obama in 2008 but did not vote for him in 2012 (I voted for Jill Stein). Just disgusted at how things have gone. Funny enough all the reasons the Republicans are hating him for are almost universally bullshit, often racially tinged (or overtly so) conspiracies. The stuff they SHOULD be mad at him for, they actually love.
