"✨🎀💉🏥✨🌈💕."

after almost a decade of fighting - thru prison, the courts, a hunger strike, and thru the insurance company - I finally got surgery this week ✨🎀💉🏥✨🌈💕 pic.twitter.com/I7WeIrR8jP

— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) October 20, 2018

Treason talk.

Let's look back before this week, to "treason" as it has appeared within the lifetime of this blog. In chronological order:

April 27, 2005: Discussing the "blood" metaphor in constitutional law, I quoted Article III: "The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

May 28, 2006: I wrote about the protest singer Phil Ochs declaring the Vietnam War over:

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is too young to die
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over

July 1, 2006: "The editors of The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times explain how they decide when to publish a secret... Baquet and Keller have written a lengthy defense of their behavior, behavior that they know has been severely criticized, even called 'treason.'"

September 20, 2006: "To me, that's treason. I call it treason against rock-and-roll, because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics," said Alice Cooper, indicting rock stars who were telling people to vote for John Kerry.

August 3, 2007: Markos Moulitsas says that in 2002, "Dissent against the president was considered treason."

August 11, 2007: A 9/11 truther criticizes me for declining to debate him, which he took to mean that I know I'm "complicit in covering up mass murder and high treason."

May 12, 2008: A scholar assures us that the Muslim world would view Obama, the son of a Muslim father, as guilty of apostasy, which has "connotations of rebellion and treason," which is considered "worse than murder."

September 12, 2011: I'm live-blogging a debate in which "treason" is thrown around casually: "Perry stands by his 'almost treasonous' remark, referring to the use of the Federal Reserve for political purposes... Huntsman accuses Perry of treason for saying we can't secure the border."

May 8, 2012: "Isn't it funny, this 'treason' incident?" Mitt Romney, running for President, failed to chide a woman who asked whether Obama should be tried for treason. I brought up (as I did today), the 1964 book "None Dare Call It Treason." I also quoted the casual use of "treason" by Chief Justice John Marshall  Cohens v. Virginia to refer to doing something unconstitutional. ("We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the Constitution.") And a commenter brought up an even more venerable use of the word, Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it." That made me say: "The country was founded on treason. We celebrate the treason we like."

Also on May 8, 2012: "Obama supporters who express outrage over the use of the word 'treason' seem to think the word means nothing but to the crime defined in law — as if the woman Romney talked to wanted Obama tried and executed. It's as if people who say 'property is theft' are freakishly insisting that property owners be prosecuted for larceny. Think of all the words we use that have more specific legal meanings that do not apply: This job is murder... The rape of the land... Slave to love..."

June 17, 2013: Edward Snowden explains why he left the country: " [T]he US Government... immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it."

July 26, 2013: From a post about the death penalty: "Here's the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, which found the death penalty for rape (even rape of a child) to be unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. No one has been executed in the U.S. for a crime other than murder since the 1960s, though the Kennedy case leaves open the possibility of capital punishment 'for other non-homicide crimes, ranging from drug-trafficking to treason.'"

April 22, 2014 : Above the Law had hyperventilated, "Justice Scalia Literally Encourages People To Commit Treason," and I punctured it, saying Scalia was just giving his usual speech about the Constitution, which is always subject to the right of revolution explained in the Declaration of Independence. I bring up Patrick Henry's "If this be treason, make the most of it."

February 23, 2015: "'Edward Snowden couldn't be here for some treason,' said Neil Patrick Harris, the Oscars host, when the documentary about him won an award." I said: "I liked the joke, because of its language precision and because it seemed at least a tad risky in the context of Hollywood celebrating itself."

February 29, 2016: Trump hesitated to "unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election" after Duke it would be "treason to your heritage" for a white person not to vote for Trump.

October 14, 2016: "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree," said Ezra Pound, who was charged with treason in WWII. He was disaffected after WWI, moved to Italy, felt inspired by Mussolini, and went on the radio criticizing the U.S., FDR, and the Jews.

December 21, 2016: I quoted the official course description for "The Problem of Whiteness," a course offered in the African Cultural Studies department of my university, the University of Wisconsin–Madison: "In this class, we will ask what an ethical white identity entails, what it means to be #woke, and consider the journal Race Traitor’s motto, 'treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.'"

January 16, 2017: I quote someone talking about Chelsea Manning: "He is a member of the military who knowingly committed treason. His, or her, gender status has nothing to do with his conviction for treason."

February 10, 2017: I quoted Trump (before his election) talking about Edward Snowden: "I think he's a total traitor and I would deal with him harshly," "And if I were president, Putin would give him over," and "Snowden is a spy who should be executed." I wondered: "But maybe you think Trump will end up looking good forefronting the iniquity of treason."

February 7, 2018: Trump had used the word "treasonous" to describe the Democrats who didn't applaud during his State of the Union Address. Yeah, it was a joke, but: "He's President and in the position of enforcing the law, and from that position punching down. He really should not be joking about treason. And I get that he's punching back, and that's his style. But people aren't just idiots if they feel afraid of a President who isn't continually assuring us that he's aware of his profound responsibilities."

April 17, 2018: I quoted Neil Gorsuch, concurring — and voting with the liberals ‚ in a case about immigration: "Vague laws invite arbitrary power. Before the Revolu­tion, the crime of treason in English law was so capa­ciously construed that the mere expression of disfavored opinions could invite transportation or death. The founders cited the crown’s abuse of 'pretended' crimes like this as one of their reasons for revolution. See Declaration of Independence ¶21."

May 4, 2018: A conservative commentator sarcastically said he was "waiting for the Left to scream treason" over John Kerry's "quiet play to save Iran deal with foreign leaders."

July 17, 2017: I quoted Byron York: "Would it have been appropriate for the Trump campaign to try to find the [Clinton] emails?... What if an intelligence operative from a friendly country got them and offered them? And what about an unfriendly country? Would there be a scale, from standard oppo research on one end to treason on the other, depending on how the emails were acquired?"

The Dean of Harvard Kennedy School tells you you're wrong if you think the title "Visiting Fellow" is an honorific.

It's not and never has been, according to the "Statement from Dean Elmendorf regarding the invitation to Chelsea Manning to be a Visiting Fellow."

In general across the School, we do not view the title of “Fellow” as conveying a special honor; rather, it is a way to describe some people who spend more than a few hours at the School.... We did not intend to honor her in any way or to endorse any of her words or deeds, as we do not honor or endorse any Fellow.

But this strong assertion that "fellow" is not an honorific is not enough. People think it is, and though Elmendorf has told them they are wrong, he apparently can't insist that these wrongheaded people shape up and get it right. He bows to their wrongness:

But I see more clearly now that many people view a Visiting Fellow title as an honorific, so we should weigh that consideration when offering invitations... Any determination should start with the presumption that more speech is better than less. In retrospect, though, I think my assessment of that balance for Chelsea Manning was wrong. Therefore, we are withdrawing the invitation to her to serve as a Visiting Fellow—and the perceived honor that it implies to some people—while maintaining the invitation for her to spend a day at the Kennedy School and speak in the Forum.

In nonacademic contexts, the word "fellow" distinctly refers to a man. Perhaps calling Chelsea Manning a "fellow" seemed discordant for gender-related reasons. I'm noticing it anyway and feel a bit offended that such a masculine word is used (or felt) as an honorific.

Anyway, in the academic context, the OED defines "fellow" as "an honorary title conferred by some universities and colleges upon distinguished graduates or other persons" but also "A holder of a certain type of fixed-term academic position or fellowship, which is typically stipendiary and held on condition of pursuing a specified branch of study." So I think Elmendorf's assertion is believable... or at least I think it would be believable if he'd refrained from withdrawing the title. Why cave in to people who are wrong?

Perhaps Chelsea Manning should not have been invited to speak with the students at all. But the decision there was that intellectual diversity and more speech are good and should be part of the university. If you really believe that, stand on principle, don't make it part of a compromise with something you think is false.

"Also, can we please keep in mind that not everyone is thrilled with the term 'deadname'?"

"It's the sort of thing that's best to use only once someone has used it themselves, not just willy-nilly. You didn't die when you transitioned."

Yes, what's going on with this metaphorical death? It sounds creepy, and yet, it's widely used in Christianity. You must be born again, etc.

Death and rebirth is also an American political theme, for example "this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom...."

"Why are you giving such coverage to a traitor who divulged secret military documents? As a retired military officer, I am outraged he was even pardoned."

The top-rated comment at The New York Times for "The Long, Lonely Road of Chelsea Manning/Her disclosure of classified documents in 2010 ushered in the age of leaks. Now, freed from prison, she talks about why she did it — and the isolation that followed."

Second highest-rated:

Manning still doesn't seem to have the slightest clue as to the impact of her stealing of this classified material. When she's drinking her Starbucks,* does she ever think about the Afghan villagers, for example, whose life she put in danger by her disclosures? Yet we're supposed to feel sorry for her for her time in prison.

Third:

Chelsea Manning was a traitor to the United States. It's not just that she leaked classified documents by the hundreds of thousands. It was that she was totally indiscriminate in doing so, taking no care to redact names to protect people's lives, and including tens of thousands of State Department documents which had nothing to do with the Iraq War but simply because she happened to get her hands on them. (That said, as a former Foreign Service Officer, I think the documents put what the State Department does in a pretty good light for the public, even if their release did cause us some problems.)

She was rightfully sentenced to a very long jail term, then pardoned by Barrack Obama in his 11th hour exit which, alas, was hardly less dignified by this pardon than Bill Clinton's pardon of a couple high-contributor convicted felons (Mark Rich comes to mind).

I saw a TV interview with her. And its ALL ABOUT ME: first Chelsea's private moral code which led to her betrayal of our country. And then, asking that the US taxpayers while she was in jail pay to help her change sexual identity from boy to girl. Fine if she wishes that, but not on my nickel, thank you.

That we coddle and pardon such a person is a true signal of moral collapse and a refusal to set a standard (and yes, standards are tough) that members of our society obey if they are to be true to each other.

She may be free from jail, but hopefully she will never be free of the social stigma of her deed.

And fourth, the kicker:

Glad the New York Times was not around 250 years ago, or you would be braying about "Benedict Arnold: Misunderstood Patriot."

______________________

* The article does in fact begin with Manning going to Starbucks. The chosen drink is, we're told, a white-chocolate mocha.

"Why do millennials keep leaking government secrets?"

By Malcolm Harris — author of “Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials" — in WaPo.

Without intending to, employers and policymakers have engineered a cohort of workers that is bound to yield leakers. An important part of our training for the 21st-century labor market has been an emphasis on taking initiative, hustling, finding ways to be useful, not waiting around for someone in charge to tell us what to do....

Since we can’t get too attached to particular employers, millennials are encouraged by baby-boomer-run institutions to find internal motivation, to live out our values through our frequent employment choices, and we’ve heard them loud and clear....

Lots of firms try to look like they’re doing good in the world, in line with millennial values. Facebook isn’t an ad company; it connects the world! Uber isn’t a cab company; it liberates moms to make money in their off hours! But when firms act contrary to their rosy recruiting copy, workers who weren’t disposed to be loyal in the first place might find another way to live out their values...

We hardly invented leaking, but millennials are especially well-suited to the tactic. It’s a squirt gun we can use on our leaders when they’ve stepped out of line. I don’t imagine that employers — public or private — are going to start inspiring loyalty or stop abusing power anytime soon....

Obama frees Chelsea Manning!

The NYT reports:

President Obama on Tuesday largely commuted the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the army intelligence analyst convicted of an enormous 2010 leak that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted the administration, and made WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures, famous.

The decision by Mr. Obama rescued Ms. Manning, who twice tried to commit suicide last year, from an uncertain future as a transgender woman incarcerated at the male military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. She has been jailed for nearly seven years, and her 35-year sentence was by far the longest punishment ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction.

Manning gets out this May, instead of in 2045.

We were just talking yesterday about the NYT's sympathetic highlighting of Manning's plight. And we were just talking today — it's one post down — about the NYT editorial "Mr. Obama, Pick Up Your Pardon Pen."

ADDED: Obama has also pardoned James Cartwright:

Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, pleaded guilty in October to a single charge of making false statements to federal investigators in 2012 when he was questioned about leaking top secret information on US efforts to cripple Iran’s nuclear program to two journalists. 

The 18 highest ranked comments on the NYT article "Chelsea Manning Describes Bleak Life in a Men’s Prison."

The disjuncture between the NYT and its readers is extreme. 

The highest rated comment is this:

As a physician who has worked with prisoners, what bothers me is how many medical amenities Chelsea is getting compared to the average prisoner. Prisoners show up with horrific late stage disseminated cancers because of staff apathy. If a patient shows up struggling to breathe or talk because there's a laryngeal mass in their hypopharynx closing off their airway and they had to wait 2 years to be seen, why should Chelsea Manning get speech therapy? The system is struggling to have life threatening conditions treated, it is not justified to spend resources on elective therapy.

(According to the article, Chelsea Manning receives "speech therapy to feminize the tone and pitch of her voice.")

Next highest:

Maybe he shouldn't have committed a crime. We're 20 trillion in debt why are we paying for prisoner sex changes. Real vets, who served with honor and distinction, who are wounded need care, can't get it, commit suicide at alarming rates and we waste money on prisoner sex changes. This is insane. What happened to common sense.

"The government continues to deny Ms. Manning’s access to necessary medical treatment for gender dysphoria, without which she will continue to suffer severe psychological harms."

"Such clear disregard of well-established medical protocols constitutes cruel and unusual punishment," says the ACLU, suing the federal government.

Not much is getting said about the Chelsea/Bradley Manning transgender announcement.

I'm thinking it must be disappointing to some people that mean/stupid things haven't been said. Or did I miss something? There's nothing about Manning at all currently trending on Memeorandum. A search for "Chelsea Manning" at rushlimbaugh.comcomes up empty. The Blaze only quotes the Washington Post on the difficulty of reporting about someone who's acted in the past under one name and gender and now asks to be referred to differently.

I can't find anyone saying anything that gives pro-transgender advocates an opportunity to pounce. Where did all this restraint come from?

Here's James Joyner at Outside the Beltway handling the issue with great sensitivity a day after an almost agonizingly reticent discussion of the topic with Joshua Foust on Bloggingheads:



I don't think I've ever heard more hemming and hawing on Bloggingheads (and that's saying a lot).

ADDED: I do see this piece in NRO by Kevin D. Williamson, "Bradley Manning Is Not a Woman," which comes across as serious and not mean-spirited. Key passage:

We have created a rhetoric of “gender identity” that is disconnected from biological sexual fact, and we have done so largely in the service of enabling the sexual mutilation of physically healthy men and women (significantly more men) by medical authorities who should be barred by professional convention if not by conscience from the removal of healthy organs (and limbs, more on that later), an act that by any reasonable standard ought to be considered mutilation rather than therapy. This is not to discount the feelings of people who suffer from gender-identity disorders — to the contrary, those feelings must be taken into account in determining courses of treatment for people who have severe personality disorders.

That's very focused on surgical intervention, which requires the participation of doctors. Speaking of things that can be disconnected, you could disconnect that surgery from more speech- and expression-based things about names, pronouns, dress, and behavior. Why can't those things be treated more like other matters of conscience, like religion, where we leave people to their own notions?

"I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood..."

"... I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible. I hope that you will support me in this transition."

Said Bradley Manning, in a statement released after he received his sentence of 35 years.

The statement went on to request that Private Manning’s supporters “refer to me by my new name and use the feminine pronoun (except in official mail to the confinement facility).” It was signed, “Chelsea Manning.”

Woke up, it was a Chelsea Manning.... and the first thing that I knew/There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too...

"I’m sorry I hurt people. I’m sorry that I hurt the United States."

"I’m apologizing for the unintended consequences of my actions. I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people."

The verdict in the Bradley Manning case.

From the NYT:

A military judge on Tuesday found Pfc. Bradley Manning not guilty of aiding the enemy, but convicted him of multiple counts of violating the Espionage Act....

Manning pleaded guilty so some other charges, but the government went forward with the more serious charges.

"Snowden is a ‘card’ that China never expected... But China is neither adept at nor used to playing it."

Said an editorial in The Global Times, which the NYT identifies as "a nationalistic mainland Chinese newspaper under the direct control of the Communist Party."

The commentary also called for China and Hong Kong to treat Mr. Snowden kindly enough so that others with national security secrets will not be discouraged from fleeing here. “China should make sure that Hong Kong is not the last place where other ‘Snowdens’ want to go,” it said.

The NYT ends the article with a quote from London lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who has represented Julian Assange. Robertson criticizes the British government's threatening to fine airlines if they bring Snowden to their country:

“This is a power hitherto used only against those who incite terrorism, race hatred and homophobia — never before against whistle-blowers,” Mr. Robertson wrote in an e-mail. “The British government is simply afraid that its judges, who are fiercely independent, and the European court would embarrass its closest ally by ruling that Snowden could not be extradited because, even if his 'revelations' prove to be mistaken, he would be subjected to oppressive treatment akin to that being meted out to Bradley Manning”....

In Robertson's analysis, disclosing national security secrets is supposed to be less severe than private speech expressing the hateful ideas: Snowden is a "whistle-blower," who has released good and useful speech to the general public.

The source of the NSA link: It's 29-year-old Edward Snowden, who has worked at the NSA for outside contractors.

The Guardian reveals at Snowden's request.

"I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.... In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."...

He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."...

"We were obsessed with capturing and killing human targets on lists and ignoring goals and missions."

"I believed if the public, particularly the American public, could see this it could spark a debate on the military and our foreign policy in general [that] might cause society to reconsider the need to engage in counter-terrorism while ignoring the human situation of the people we engaged with every day."

Bradley Manning, pleading guilty.

"Reddit, Creative Commons and Demand Progress co-founder Aaron Swartz committed suicide in New York City on Friday, Jan. 11."

"He was 26 years old."

Aaron Swartz was facing a potential sentence of dozens of years in prison for allegedly trying to make MIT academic journal articles public.... In September 2012, Aaron Swartz was charged with thirteen counts of felony hacking. In July 2011 Swartz was arrested for allegedly scraping 4 million MIT papers from the JSTOR online journal archive....

Swartz's subsequent struggle for money to offset legal fees to fight the Department of Justice and stay afloat was no secret....

Demand Progress — itself an organization focused on online campaigns dedicated to fighting for civil liberties, civil rights, and progressive government reform - compared The Justice Department's indictment of Swartz to "trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library."

Swartz's suicide came two days after JSTOR announced it is releasing "more than 4.5 million articles" to the public.

ADDED: Here's a podcast from a year ago in which Swartz discusses his activism stopping SOPA (the The Stop Online Piracy Act). The part with Swartz begins at 17:20.

AND: Here's Swartz's Wikipedia page. Picture:



ALSO: Cory Doctorow:

I met Aaron when he was 14 or 15.... Aaron accomplished some incredible things in his life... His stunts were breathtaking. At one point, he singlehandedly liberated 20 percent of US law. PACER, the system that gives Americans access to their own (public domain) case-law, charged a fee for each such access....