Pardon Me Mr. President?

Pardons: Strength or Weakness?

Today we heard that President Trump has used once again his power to pardon individuals of his choice. This can be regarded as either a highly admired refinement to a system of government, or a leak in the hull of a great ship that needs repair. Wisdom or folly?

You can Google about all major pardons made by U.S. Presidents. I am restricting this to the Presidential power which can only apply to federal crimes against the United States. Take note: the one exception is impeachment, thank goodness. Similar powers belong to State Governors.

Many people are all over Trump for this and expecting him to do it again with Roger Stone. In fairness, many Presidents have used this power and often in controversial ways. Here is a list of past Presidents and their numbers of pardons, most to least:

https://www.thoughtco.com/number-of-pardons-by-president-3367600

This varies from Franklin D. Roosevelt with 2819 to George H. W. Bush with 74. Obama granted 212 of them.

I see it as a very visible black eye in the system. In my opinion the process should be changed. One person can be just too biased and often for the wrong reasons. Any pardon is usually preceded by a lot of study and assessment resulting in advice to the President. This is only reasonable. Apparently however, he or she can ignore all of this and you know who is famous for this.

My suggestion would be to have a vote in the Senate - one which is deliberately brief. It should also require a substantial majority - more like 80% in favour. From what I can see the last majority in the Upper House over 80% was back in the 1800s. This should ensure some representation on both sides. This way it would indeed be a combination of many opinions. Surely genuinely deserved cases could find a bipartisan audience.

Here is another approach and possibly a backup to the case where a party has a more than 80% majority. This would entail the Chief Justice simply drawing randomly an odd number (no ties) of Senators' names. Each person must vote either yes or no on each case. The details of each pardon would already have been defined. A committee would bear witness to the ballads being legitimate before any draw.

Changing the constitution is not easy as most anti gun people know. Surely there would be more of an even split on this change?

The Brewster