There’s been a good bit of handwringing over President Biden’s next presidential pardons. Hard on the heels of his unsurprising yet still somehow bombshell pardon for his son Hunter, the chatter has turned to who might be next. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)? former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci? Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.)? The guy who cut Kash Patel off in traffic last week?
Speculation runs rampant.
The prospects have both Democrats and Republicans all atwitter. Some are calling for blanket pardons for just about everybody, while others are lamenting the decline of standards of our civic leaders.
Count me among the group who would love to see Biden pardon just about everybody he can imagine. I mean, give him the entire office directory for the House and Senate, and the plum book for the executive branch, and just let him go to town.
My reasoning however, is probably different from most others'.
I don’t fear broad criminal reprisals aimed at President-elect Trump’s enemies. If Trump really wanted to do that sort of thing, he would have followed through on the “lock her up” mantra from the 2016 campaign.
And, as I wrote in these pages several months back, while there is absolutely nothing wrong with applying the same standards to prominent Democrats that were ostensibly........