President Obama pardons a turkey named Courage last
Thanksgiving. Legal professionals wonder when he'll use
his power to pardon a few worthy human beings.
Le Figaro, France
Can't Mr. Obama Pardon
Anything But Turkeys?!
"Legal
associations and professionals are perplexed by this attitude. Is Obama trying
to show his firmness? Is he trying to show that his priorities are elsewhere? …
For the turkey on Thursday, to be pardoned is a wonderful stroke of luck. As
Americans eat 46 million of its fellows day, it will hit the road pampered like a star, headed to a golden retirement."
Barack Obama isn't the first U.S. president to be stingy with pardons. President George W. Bush was one of the stingiest, awarding only 200 during his eight years in office. And like his recent predecessors, he too pardoned two Thanksgiving Turkeys every year in office.
For Thanksgiving, Obama will save
a turkey's life. It's a privilege of his office to pardon the condemned. Yet
since taking office, he hasn't offered grace to anyone except Courage, the Thanksgiving
turkey that was spared in 2009. Can't Obama do any better?
American prisoners have it
bad. For months, defense attorneys have (figuratively speaking) been climbing
the curtains of the White House to obtain pardons or a lessening of charges in
the legal cases against their clients. But to no avail. Who would have thought it? On
the face of it, Obama has the perfect profile of a very understanding and
generous father. But for months, petitions have been accumulating without
result. What's worse is that he just refused hundreds (676) of requests for
commutations and dozens (71) for criminal charges. America is asking why.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Legal associations and
professionals are perplexed by this attitude. Is Obama trying to show his
firmness? Is he trying to show that his priorities are elsewhere? Should there
be a new system of pardons? Already, America's calculating machine has begun to
emit statistics. Pardon Power, a blog
that discusses the issue of pardons, says that number 44 is the fourth slowest drawing
U.S. president when it comes to the right to pardon. Only Bill Clinton, George
W. Bush and George Washington were slower. In two terms, Bill Clinton used his
clemency 456 times (including one hundred times just before his departure) and George
W. Bush just 200.
Couldn't number 44 at least exercise
the pardon in a symbolic way? According to Margaret Love, former
Director of the ABA Commission on Effective Criminal Sanctions, he could pardon
immigrants who have completed their sentences and now face deportation.
Let's be careful: the White
House and the Justice Department don't publish lists on these cases, so we might
later learn that such measures were taken without fanfare. The Thanksgiving
holiday would be the right moment.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
For the turkey on Thursday,
to be pardoned is a wonderful stroke of luck. As Americans eat 46 million of
its fellows that day, it will hit the road pampered like a star, headed to a golden retirement.
