In Defense of the Chelsea Manning Commutation
Those who worry that it undermines state secrets would do better to start addressing the core reasons that the classification system is losing legitimacy.
On Tuesday, President Obama commuted the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, a former Army analyst who violated several laws that forbid disclosing facts that have been declared classified by the U.S. government. Laws against revealing state secrets are intended to protect national security and the safety of the men and women who serve in the military and intelligence services. Those are worthy aims and the laws are defensible in principle.
In practice,
