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Obama as Scrooge: no Christmas clemency grants

By Douglas A. Berman

As I complained in posts here and here and here around Thanksgiving, it was sad and telling that President Barack Obama's first use of his historic clemency power was to continue the modern (silly?) tradition of pardoning a turkey.  At that time, however, I was hoping that Prez Obama might be saving up some holiday clemencies for the Christmas season.  But now the Obamas have gone off to Hawaii on their vacation; as this official webpage reveals, Prez Obama has left behind on Christmas Eve nearly 3,500 requests for pardons and commutations sitting unresolved on his Oval Office desk. In this new Huffington Post commentary, which is titled "What I Want For Christmas: Mass Clemency," Jacob Appel makes a fulsome pitch for all executive branch leaders to consider the granting of mass clemency this holiday season...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on December 24, 2009 (boomark / email).