re: #165 goddamnedfrank

Frankly the argument that pardons shouldn’t be given to people who are clearly guilty is a weak one since the Burdick decision makes the acceptance of a pardon an implicit admission of guilt.

A better argument is that pardons are supposed to be an act of grace by the executive that somehow benefits and heals society. For instance George Washington gave the first two pardons to John Mitchell and Phillip Weigel, convicted of treason, because he didn’t want to see them hanged and become martyrs which might have led to further riots and destabilization. There was no question that the two men were guilty and the pardons weren’t given to benefit the men or the anti Whiskey tax political faction they represented but were instead given to show that the federal government was merciful and just, strong but not tyrannical.

The real problem with Arpaio, D’Souza and Libby’s pardons is that they were implicitly carried out in the furtherance of a political gambit by the President to undermine the government’s authority in ongoing law enforcement proceedings that he believes threaten him personally. The entire goal of these pardons is to test the waters for more explicit acts of obstruction of justice.

“The original idea was to give the president the power to right wrongs when the justice system failed. For example, if evidence later surfaced proving that an innocent person had been imprisoned, the president could free that person. It was never intended to let a supporter of your party off the hook after having pleaded guilty to a political crime”..electoral-vote.com yesterday