Osler's Razor

As I wrote in the Waco Trib last week, being a clemency scholar is like being Santa-- for a few days a year everyone wants to talk to you, and the rest of the year you feel kind of out of place. I would add that for those few days, just like Santa, a lot of people pretend to do what you do. 

Over the past two days, President Trump has released two batches of clemency grants. There are some good ones in there-- I helped Weldon Angelos craft his successful pardon petition, granted on Tuesday-- but a lot of them are sadly familiar: grants to those close to Trump and his friends and those they have vouched for. The overwhelming majority of those given relief either abused power as military contractors or immigration agents, were involved in fraud or political corruption, or received a second grant of clemency from Trump. Left behind were the 13,750 people whose petitions are sitting around somewhere in the bureaucracy of the DOJ/WH pipeline. Actually, it isn't fair to call it a "pipeline" anymore. I would call it a "swamp," but water actually flows in and out of swamps regularly.

On the good side, we are hopeful that the Biden administration will do better. The New York Times today has a staff editorial that promotes the changes I have been pushing for years (with attribution, even!). You can check out the whole thing out here-- be sure to read to the very end to get all the important stuff.

# posted by Mark Osler @ 1:00 AM