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Characterising presidential pardons and clemency decisions as part of “criminal justice reform” is absurd. An executive’s limited and occasional exercise of an extraordinary power does nothing to address the systemic problems infesting crime and punishment in our country.
I have to disagree with Ken. Giving Conahan clemency shows a lack of even handedness in the system. The feds and his fellow bar members sat on their asses for years watching him ruin lives to line his pockets in the name of deference and respect to a judge. And now he gets to retire to his million dollar Florida home. You can't expect people to believe the system even aspires to be fair and even handed if it doesn't reject the Conahans and Ciavarellas like the cancer they are. I'd honestly argue a crooked judge is a greater danger to society than plenty of murderers.
Correction: his wife's million dollar home that she paid cash for using money she earned from the sweat of her brow and definitely didn't divert from the shell company used to hide their bribe money.
Biden's commutations are not reform by any definition. They are one off gifts that will rarely ever be applied to someone else in the same circumstances. This does nothing but harm the ability to make actual reform happen. It is absolutely galling to hear this bullshit come out of Ken's mouth.
But hey, I'm sure Ken will be just as understanding when Trump pardons everyone over Jan 6. After all, that will be just as even handed and categorical.
Josh, you got this one 1000% right. The Biden administration really screwed the pooch on this one in so many ways.
I came here to find a middle ground between Ken and Josh on the mass COVID commutations (not pardons).
Ken is correct that you can’t let the thought that someone will feel aggrieved by an act of mercy (or simple cost-benefit calculation) stop you. We have an increasingly bloodthirsty public in this country, fueled by some of the worst media and people in the world, including Mango Mussolini himself. If hostility to mercy among some number of people in the US is the determining criterion about whether anyone gets any mercy, we will never have any acts of mercy.
Carter was correct to pardon draft avoiders, no matter how much spittle was sprayed and how much anger that caused to others, including those who had lost family members drafted with higher draft numbers than folks who fled to Canada. So I reject Josh’s “do a case by case review” approach entirely — once you start trimming your sails on acts of mercy because of anticipated hostility, you’re just politicking.
But Ken is wrong in this case about the particular case highlighted. I’m no “tuff on crime” advocate and am constantly promoting books about the systemic failures in the criminal justice system to a mainly TV-educated public (which is to say totally uniformed people).
The reason that Conahan should have been excluded is not because his crime was especially lurid or his victims especially sympathetic. He should have been categorically excluded from consideration for the health of the law enforcement system. That is, Conahan should have been categorically excluded without regard to what he did — i.e., not for what he did but from where he sat in the system.
Nobody in law enforcement should be able to be corrupt and to act corruptly and ever escape so much as a day of their sentence or get away with a penny of gain from it. If we want the system to have some integrity and to be seen as having some integrity, we need to have a determined effort to impoverish all corrupt law enforcement types completely, to take every penny they have, and that can even be plausibly traced to their job. We need this from top to bottom, for corrupt cops and prosecutors who suborn perjury and hide Brady material and CERTAINLY for any corrupt judges. . . . They should lose pensions, be forced to pay back all pay they “earned” while acting corruptly, be barred from any pensions and retirement, and lose any but indigent health care, and their spouses and children should lose every possible or probable fruit of their corruption.
Cops and judges and prosecutors on the take should sleep badly every single night, in terror that someday they will be found out and they and their families will be ruined, and that every piece of property they bought while on the take will be taken from them and used as restitution for their victims.
Because we don’t have such a categorical policy like this, we have far too many corrupt actors in the law enforcement realm, and they are not at all deterred.
Seems like ABC could have printed a clarifying correction after the fact. Any thoughts on why they chose not to?
With respect to the cost to ABC/Disney, the amount seems like “mouse nuts” (nope not sorry), and if my junk mail is correct, they can write the $15M donation for the library off their taxes.
Stephanopoulos Was Repeatedly Warned Before Broadcast
December 19, 2024 at 10:49 am EST By Taegan Goddard 58 Comments
The New York Post reports George Stephanopoulos “was warned” by his executive producer not to accuse Donald Trump of rape before the “This Week” broadcast that got ABC News a defamation suit.
Characterising presidential pardons and clemency decisions as part of “criminal justice reform” is absurd. An executive’s limited and occasional exercise of an extraordinary power does nothing to address the systemic problems infesting crime and punishment in our country.
Please thank Sara for leaving Ken's exasperated sighs audible in the mix.
I have to disagree with Ken. Giving Conahan clemency shows a lack of even handedness in the system. The feds and his fellow bar members sat on their asses for years watching him ruin lives to line his pockets in the name of deference and respect to a judge. And now he gets to retire to his million dollar Florida home. You can't expect people to believe the system even aspires to be fair and even handed if it doesn't reject the Conahans and Ciavarellas like the cancer they are. I'd honestly argue a crooked judge is a greater danger to society than plenty of murderers.
Correction: his wife's million dollar home that she paid cash for using money she earned from the sweat of her brow and definitely didn't divert from the shell company used to hide their bribe money.
Biden's commutations are not reform by any definition. They are one off gifts that will rarely ever be applied to someone else in the same circumstances. This does nothing but harm the ability to make actual reform happen. It is absolutely galling to hear this bullshit come out of Ken's mouth.
But hey, I'm sure Ken will be just as understanding when Trump pardons everyone over Jan 6. After all, that will be just as even handed and categorical.
Josh, you got this one 1000% right. The Biden administration really screwed the pooch on this one in so many ways.
I came here to find a middle ground between Ken and Josh on the mass COVID commutations (not pardons).
Ken is correct that you can’t let the thought that someone will feel aggrieved by an act of mercy (or simple cost-benefit calculation) stop you. We have an increasingly bloodthirsty public in this country, fueled by some of the worst media and people in the world, including Mango Mussolini himself. If hostility to mercy among some number of people in the US is the determining criterion about whether anyone gets any mercy, we will never have any acts of mercy.
Carter was correct to pardon draft avoiders, no matter how much spittle was sprayed and how much anger that caused to others, including those who had lost family members drafted with higher draft numbers than folks who fled to Canada. So I reject Josh’s “do a case by case review” approach entirely — once you start trimming your sails on acts of mercy because of anticipated hostility, you’re just politicking.
But Ken is wrong in this case about the particular case highlighted. I’m no “tuff on crime” advocate and am constantly promoting books about the systemic failures in the criminal justice system to a mainly TV-educated public (which is to say totally uniformed people).
The reason that Conahan should have been excluded is not because his crime was especially lurid or his victims especially sympathetic. He should have been categorically excluded from consideration for the health of the law enforcement system. That is, Conahan should have been categorically excluded without regard to what he did — i.e., not for what he did but from where he sat in the system.
Nobody in law enforcement should be able to be corrupt and to act corruptly and ever escape so much as a day of their sentence or get away with a penny of gain from it. If we want the system to have some integrity and to be seen as having some integrity, we need to have a determined effort to impoverish all corrupt law enforcement types completely, to take every penny they have, and that can even be plausibly traced to their job. We need this from top to bottom, for corrupt cops and prosecutors who suborn perjury and hide Brady material and CERTAINLY for any corrupt judges. . . . They should lose pensions, be forced to pay back all pay they “earned” while acting corruptly, be barred from any pensions and retirement, and lose any but indigent health care, and their spouses and children should lose every possible or probable fruit of their corruption.
Cops and judges and prosecutors on the take should sleep badly every single night, in terror that someday they will be found out and they and their families will be ruined, and that every piece of property they bought while on the take will be taken from them and used as restitution for their victims.
Because we don’t have such a categorical policy like this, we have far too many corrupt actors in the law enforcement realm, and they are not at all deterred.
Seems like ABC could have printed a clarifying correction after the fact. Any thoughts on why they chose not to?
With respect to the cost to ABC/Disney, the amount seems like “mouse nuts” (nope not sorry), and if my junk mail is correct, they can write the $15M donation for the library off their taxes.
Looks like this was why ABC paid so much:
Stephanopoulos Was Repeatedly Warned Before Broadcast
December 19, 2024 at 10:49 am EST By Taegan Goddard 58 Comments
The New York Post reports George Stephanopoulos “was warned” by his executive producer not to accuse Donald Trump of rape before the “This Week” broadcast that got ABC News a defamation suit.
Nothing happening in Georgia is an emergency, and you don't need an emergency podcast.