(CNN) President Obama should pardon Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden before President-elect Trump takes office and makes two internationally embarrassing situations worse. In a 2013 article for The National Law Journal, I argued that neither Manning nor Snowden was a hero, and both deserved prosecution. But times have changed, and the leakers deserve pardons before Trump is sworn in. Manning has served more than six years of an excessive thirty-year sentence. Throughout her incarceration, the federal government has proven itself unequipped to humanely incarcerate a transgender woman -- even as the Obama administration has reformed military policies to be more inclusive of transgender people and attempted to advance LGBT rights abroad.Alagood: Even if Manning and Snowden don't deserve pardons, the US deserves to be free from the international embarrassment caused by the two cases
To be fair, _ dumped government files onto the web without filters or redactions. _ and his appointees are likely to inflame the situation and make Snowden an even more sympathetic character.