A Montana judge who has been fiercely criticized for giving an admitted rapist only 30 days in prison acknowledged Tuesday the sentence may have been illegal and ordered the defendant back to court for a new hearing.

District Judge G. Todd Baugh said state law appears to require a mandatory minimum sentence of two years for Stacey Rambold, 54, who was convicted of raping a 14-year-old student who later committed suicide, the Associated Press reports. Baugh has been the target of protests and petitions seeking his resignation since issuing the short sentence, in which he said the girl was in “as much in control of the situation” as her teacher and “older than her chronological age.”

But the judge’s attempted course correction — he wants Rambold back in court Friday — has done little to win over Baugh’s critics.

“I wish the judge had been thoughtful enough to get it…

Chelsea Manning is formally seeking a presidential pardon for leaking classified documents that her lawyer says should never have been classified in the first place.

Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, filed the papers on Tuesday requesting a pardon from President Barack Obama, the Associated Press reports. Manning, the army private formerly known as Bradley Manning before voicing her desire to live as a woman, was convicted last month of leaking a trove of diplomatic cables and other documents to the website WikiLeaks. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

“The decisions I made in 2010 were made out of a concern for my country and the world we live in,” Manning wrote in her pardon petition.

[AP]

Boston’s mayor has a solution for fixing downtrodden Detroit: Just blow it all up.

Beantown’s Thomas Menino toldthe New York Times Magazine that if he had to live in a different city, he’d move to Detroit. And what would he do when he got there? “I’d blow up the place and start all over,” he said.

Detroit, under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, recently became the largest city to file for bankruptcy. But Mayor Dave Bing didn’t appreciate Menino’s slight — especially in light of the bombing at the Boston Marathon earlier this year.

“It’s extremely regrettable that Boston Mayor Thomas Menino used such an unfortunate choice of words to describe what he would do if he came to Detroit,” Bing said in a statement on Tuesday. “I would think they mayor of a city that recently experienced a deadly bombing attack would be more sensitive and not…