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Editorial on presidential pardon practices

By Douglas A. Berman

This editorial in today's San Francisco Chronicle, titled "Bush fumbles on pardons," keeps the spotlight on the recent ugly news from the US Pardon Attorney's Office.  Here are snippets: President Bush always has had a reputation for being tight in his exercise of the presidential pardon.  Oddly, the pardon is the one area in which his power is absolute ? a president essentially can pardon or commute the sentence of any felon for any reason ? yet this is the rare executive power Bush has chosen to underutilize.  So much for his compassionate conservatism. Last Monday, a New York Times opinion piece written by George Lardner, an associate at the Center for the Study of the Presidency, reported that Roger Adams, the Department of Justice Pardon Attorney under President Clinton and Bush, had been transferred to a new DOJ position...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 11, 2008 (boomark / email).