Chelsea Manning is thumbing his nose at the law again.  Laws, it seems, are for little people, not publicity hogs who get their name in the news.  Or perhaps, as Obama's pardon taught him, it's quite possible to get away with anything.

In filing to run for the Senate in Maryland, as Manning did a couple of weeks ago, he violated Pentagon regulations prohibiting political activity while on active duty.  Manning, who is appealing his conviction for mishandling hundreds of thousands of government documents, falls into that category even while on unpaid leave, according to military lawyers cited by the Daily Caller:

Chelsea Manning has filed to run for Senate as a Democratic candidate in Maryland, but such a run subjects Manning to prosecution for violating Pentagon regulations on political activities, according to former military lawyers.

Manning, the transgender [sic] soldier who spent seven years in prison for leaking more than 700,000 sensitive documents to WikiLeaks, recently filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and is seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for the Senate seat in Maryland currently occupied by Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, a two-term senator.

Now, far be it for those of us on the right to want someone like Manning to drop his primary challenge against Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, who will have to spend money to defend his position ahead of the general election. And far be it from most of us to object to Manning as the face of the Democratic Party if he were to beat Cardin.  Manning's nutbag positions – using the f-word to curse the cops, calling for the shutdown of prisons and opening the borders – should probably preclude his being elected even in liberal Maryland, meaning another Republican pickup in the Senate.

It's also reality, if not formally so, that Manning is out of the Army and will never be welcome within a mile of its bases, given his odiously treasonous behavior. 

But there's something distinctly disturbing about how this guy thumbs his nose at anything he ever agrees to, such as following Pentagon regulations, which he had to consent to for the position he got that enabled him to abuse that trust.  Such rules, in his fevered mind, are for normal people, not him.  The fact that he keeps breaking the law – and getting away with it – pretty well reinforces that he will just go on doing it and, in the end, diminishing the country.

He's got to learn limits if there is to be any rule of law at all.