Chelsea Manning is the quintessential spoiled brat.
What do you do if you're in prison for stealing and leaking highly sensitive classified information and the mean old prison authorities won't give you free gender reassignment surgery?
Well, if you're Manning, you go on a five day hunger strike and the prison caves.
Prison food bad? Even though Manning's crime was serious and jeopardized the lives of U.S. soldiers, President Obama inscrutably commuted Manning's sentence.
So it was sort of nice to see a small Waterloo for Manning in the form of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Politics rescinding its visiting fellowship offer to Manning.
The adults in the felonship–I mean fellowship–saga are former CIA deputy director Mike Morell, who resigned a fellowship at Harvard's Belfer Center in protest of the Manning appointment, and current CIA director Mike Pompeo, who cancelled a speaking engagement at Harvard because of Manning.
These are two men in a position to know just how damaging leaking of classified information is. Morell wrote a letter of resignation that noted the harm done by Manning's leaks and the justice of the guilty sentence in Manning's court martial. Morell went on to say:
Please know that I am fully aware that Belfer and the IOP are separate institutions within the Kennedy School. And that most likely Belfer had nothing to do with the invitation of Ms. Manning to be a fellow at IOP. But as an institution, The Kennedy School’s decision will assist Ms. Manning in her long-standing effort to legitimize the criminal path that she took to prominence, and attempt that may encourage others to leak classified information as well. I have an obligation to my conscience – and I believe to the country – to stand up against any efforts to justify leaks of sensitive national security information.
Pompeo used the T-word in describing Manning's actions:
"While I have served my country as a soldier in the United States Army and will continue to defend Ms. Manning's right to offer a defense of why she chose this path, I believe it is shameful for Harvard to place its stamp of approval upon her treasonous actions,” Pompeo said in a letter to Harvard on Thursday, according to NBC News.
Manning has been pouting, but it appears the former intelligence analyst finally encountered some adults willing to say no.
Hat tip: American Thinker