Yesterday, Bradley Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison on charges of espionage to theft for leaking more than 700,000 documents to the WikiLeaks website while working in Iraq in 2010.
But he'll probably be in the news today even more for the stunning revelation that he intends to transition as a woman and now be known as Chelsea E. Manning.
NBC News reported that in the U.S. prison system, transgender prisoners who have not had genital surgery are generally assigned to live with their birth-sex peers, but the military policy is unclear.
Manning is expected to serve out his sentence at Fort Leavenworth, which does not provide hormone therapy or sex-reassignment surgery to inmates, according to the Courthouse News Service. Manning's 35-year sentence angered some people yesterday as being too light (such as Bill O'Reilly).
I was out last night hanging with Heritage Foundation chairman Jim DeMint (that post will be live later this morning) who was in town with 500 or so Tea Party lovin' fans. But hours before that event, pro Obamacare supporters made their presence felt as well.
And last night was the last formal debate between all the candidates on the ballot next Tuesday in St. Petersburg. I was at Tuesday night's mayoral forum in West St. Pete, where the tension between front-runners Bill Foster and Rick Kriseman was palpable.