Dana Mathewson

I don't write 'em, folks, I just read 'em and pass 'em along.From Urgent Agenda:

FROM REUTERS: WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Chelsea Manning, the transgender U.S. Army soldier who served seven years in military prison for leaking classified data, is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate seat from Maryland, according to Federal election filings seen on Saturday. Manning, who was granted clemency by former U.S. President Barack Obama, was released in May from a U.S. military prison in Kansas where she had been serving time for passing secrets to the WikiLeaks website in the biggest breach of classified data in the history of the United States. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin was elected in 2006 to that seat and is expected to run for re-election this year. He is the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Cardin was easily re-elected in 2012, beating his Republican challenger by 30 points in the heavily-Democratic state. Manning had been working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. She was convicted by court-martial in 2013 of espionage and other offenses for furnishing more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, an international organization that publishes information from anonymous sources. What a total jerk. What an embarrassment to the Democratic Party that Manning is seeking its nomination. The party should make it impossible for this dubious character to run...based on her service record. There's a law, obviously ignored these days (see Kerry, John) that states that a requirement for eligibility for the U.S. Senate for former servicemen (and women, obviously) is to have been separated from the service via Honorable Discharge. One might quibble about Kerry, who was given an Honorable Discharge after the fact, having begged one from the Peanut Farmer; he didn't get one at first, and it's obvious why he kept his service records firmly under lock and key in 2004. But Manning? There's no question about him/her/it! If this, er, person really decides to run, I sure hope this provision comes up to smack it in the face -- hard!

FROM TIM:

And what of convicted felons being allowed to run? Especially ones guilty of espionage, which Un-Manning clearly committed? Senators often are given sensitive, even highly classified information. I guess we are just going to throw all that out the window.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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