Saying a sympathetic goodbye to the Obama administration is becoming very difficult in view of his last-minute executive actions and orders: failing to block a harmful U.N. resolution against Israel, our only democratic ally in the Middle East; the federal land grab in the Western states to curry the favor of environmentalists; an attempt to make permanent his earlier restrictions on off-shore oil drilling — all without congressional approval.

But his recent sentence commutation of Pvt. Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, whose treasonous act of sending classified military documents to Wikileaks exposed our military and special ops personnel to imminent danger, is inexcusable.

Senator John McCain was outraged as he explained that the identification of those special operators was picked up by Al Qaida and some simply disappeared. In all probability, they were killed. McCain asked, “How do we explain Manning’s commutation to the family members who lost loved ones; what justification do we offer?”

The answer eludes me and most Americans, I’m sure, especially those who have sons and daughters in the special ops community.

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