A grotesque 30 days for the rule of law

Biden blows a kiss to killers, blows another kiss to drug dealers, pardons numerous members of his family as time runs out -- then Trump takes advantage by undifferentiated pardons for Jan 6 rioters.

This is going to be short for now, partly because I’m getting ready for dinner with a liberal but honest and gifted sentencing expert, but mostly because the topic — while urgent given today’s events — is too big to cover in one post. In coming days, I’ll follow up.

Let me start with the basics. Respect for and, ultimately, obedience to law depends on such public confidence as the law commands and earns. First and foremost in that regard is the idea that it will be administered with a fair mind, and that you will be dealt with based on an honest assessment of what you did rather than who you are, who you know, or how your politics lean.

Over the last 30 days, this cornerstone of the way we govern ourselves has taken several massive hits, mostly by Biden as he snickers and slithers his way out of public life, and today, I regret to say, by thoughtlessly broad and largely undifferentiated pardons issued by President Trump.

In order: Late last month, Biden cleared out almost all of federal death row. He did this not because there is any serious argument that his bloodthirsty commutees are innocent, but simply to cater to the Left wing of his party. As reported here:

President Joe Biden announced…that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office."….

The move spares the lives of people convicted in killings, including the slayings of police and military officers, people on federal land and those involved in deadly bank robberies or drug deals, as well as the killings of guards or prisoners in federal facilities.

It means just three federal inmates are still facing execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.

In an irony Biden is too dull to get, exempting three killers from this move proves exactly the argument upon which the death penalty principally rests — that some murders are so far outside the boundaries of civilized life the only punishment consistent with the Eighth Amendment that comes close to fitting the crime is execution. But with no political accountability left, Biden could care less. Nor could he care that, in a form of government dedicated to the will of the people, the way to (essentially) abolish the federal death penalty is to go to Congress. Still, as ever with the lawless if finger-waving Biden (see, e.g., his handing out billions in government money to college loan deadbeats without congressional permission), it’s simply what he wants, not what the elsewhere-highly-praised established democratic processes allow.

Biden followed his death penalty clemency spree by an even bigger spree for drug dealers — and I don’t mean someone who sold a joint to a 30 year-old. As reported here:

President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 non-violent drug offenders on Friday, just days before president-elect Donald Trump moves into the White House.

With the announcement, Biden has set a new record for most pardons and commutations issued by a president.

One might hope for a new record for low inflation or serious border enforcement, but, ya know, stuff happens. Also, unmentioned is that the largest share of commutees were black people with crack cocaine convictions — crack cocaine having been a major cause of the murder spike in the late 1980’s, where blacks were grossly disproportionately the victims.

Then just within the last few hours, Biden doubled down on the disgrace of pardoning his own quite guilty son by extending his graciousness (as it were) to a goodly chunk of the whole family. As reported here:

Joe Biden pardoned his siblings and their spouses on his way out of the White House, saying Monday that his family had been “subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics.”

“Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end,” he said as his presidential term was ending.

The family pardons were the surprise finale in a series of unprecedented presidential actions by the Democrat, who has been known as an institutionalist during his half-century in politics. Biden also pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and allies who have been targeted by Republican President Donald Trump. He was sworn in Monday.

It was a remarkable use of Biden’s presidential power: None of the above has been charged with any crime….

And none was ever going to be except in the fervid imagination of the Left.

Could someone remind me again who’s acting like a king?

P.S. Although it’s getting increasingly hard to remember, using the powers of your public trust to hand out goodies to your family used to considered the definition of abuse of office, or at least it was before Bill Clinton.

But the very unfortunate kicker is that President Trump just now contributes to, rather than rejects, the toxic blend mixing politics and law:

President Trump on Monday pardoned members of the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and signed dozens of executive orders addressing the first priorities of his administration.

Mr. Trump gave sweeping pardons to nearly all of the 1,600 rioters charged with storming the Capitol and commuted the sentences of several others. His decision appears to cover both people accused of low-level, nonviolent offenses that day and those who committed violence.

The account above is the version by the NYT, so you have to take it with a grain, or maybe a mountain, of salt. And there may well be some, or many, of the Jan 6 rioters who, on an individual basis, deserve clemency. But to grant blanket clemency so quickly to so many without any (known to me) individual review is to follow Biden’s depredation of the rule of law rather than to supply the desperately needed antidote.