Why Obama commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence

"The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven," Portia famously tells Shylock, who is demanding a pound of flesh from her friend Antonio in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. "It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown." That's one way of looking at President Obama's decision on Tuesday to commute the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army pri...