A long time ago (2008) in galaxy far, far away barack obama promised to strengthen protections for whistleblowers:
Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
But you know what a liar he is. Once in office, obama conducted an unprecedented war on whistleblowers :
When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.
In fact, obama has used the Espionage Act more than all other administrations- combined. By 2013 the obama promise to protect whistleblowers vanished from the obama website.
One of those targeted with the Espionage Act by obama was Bradley Manning.Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified documents and then sent them to Wikileaks:
The more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables army Pfc Bradley Manning disclosed through WikiLeaks have had a chilling effect on American foreign relations, a high-ranking State Department official testified on Monday.
Patrick Kennedy, the US undersecretary for management, said at the soldier’s sentencing hearing some foreign government officials, business leaders, educators and journalists remain reluctant to speak freely in private with US diplomats more than two years after the cables were published.
Kennedy’s testimony came during the second week of a hearing to determine Manning’s sentence for leaking the cables, 470,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and some warzone video to the anti-secrecy group while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010. WikiLeaks began publishing the cables in November 2010 and eventually posted almost all of them on its website.
The obama administration made clear how grave the offense was:
Prosecutors have presented evidence the disclosures fractured US militaryrelationships with foreign governments and Afghan villagers, endangered the lives of foreign citizens who had confided in diplomats and chilled State Department discussions with some overseas human-rights workers.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Today, barack obama inexplicably commuted that sentence, which is really curious considering how outraged democrats were about Wikileaks’ disclosure of the Podesta emails- far more than they were about clinton’s mishandling of top secret information. obama hammered the media for reporting “every juicy little bit” from Wikileaks.CNN’s Chris Cuomo went off the rails and claimed that reading Wikileaks publications was illegal.
And today it all changed. Wikileaks is cool again. Leaking classified documents to Wikileaks is cool again. Julian Assange is probably smiling. The irony was not lost on many:
“Can I just point out an irony here? The president has just pardoned Chelsea Manning who leaked some very important confidential secrets that hurt the United States to WikiLeaks. Now WikiLeaks played a role, you could argue whether it was major or minor, in defeating his (Obama) candidate for president, Hillary Clinton,” said Sabato, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Greg Gutfeld opined that Manning’s sentence was commuted because he/she is a “romantic, heroic figure” to the LGBT community. Who knows? One thing is clear. obama has made Donald Trump a legitimate President, so now you democrats can STFU. It’s all cool.
UPDATE
I just had to add this (via Instapundit)
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.