The US founders made a grave error in granting presidents pardon power | James Rosen
www.theguardian.com
Trump’s utter abuse of the power proves it. As the midterms approach, voters have not forgotten January 6

From betraying Ukraine and dispatching masked agents who killed Americans to deporting US citizens and pulling out of accords controlling climate change and Iranian nuclear weapons, the list of Donald Trump’s abuses is long and growing still longer, seemingly by the day.

Looking back decades from now, historians will see that at the top of this shameful list is Trump’s utter abuse of his pardon power. It started on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned more than 1,500 insurrectionists who, on 6 January 2021, had stormed the US Capitol.

More recently, as documented in astonishing accounts by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and 60 Minutes, Trump has overseen a robust pardons market in which friends or relatives of criminals offer to pay millions for presidential clemency.

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  • Mulligrubs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    44·
    1 day ago

    The constitution worked pretty well for some time, but that time is over.

    We’ve been overdue for a constitutional convention for a rewrite suitable today (not 1776) for decades, but now that “dollars are free speech” and “corporations are people”, that won’t be a legal option.

    1. Corporations don’t want a constitutional convention.
    2. Our politicians require “donations” to get reelected.
    3. To get those “donations” they do what their “donors” want.
    4. Their “donors” want them to cut taxes and wages.
    5. The voters by and large therefore have low wages, and can’t “donate” enough to influence.
    6. So the “donors” control all policy, and will until it collapses in on itself
    7. Pardons are the least of our worries
    8. Good luck getting them to throw out their “get out of jail free” card

    I’d love to be wrong, please let me be wrong

    • heartSagan5@lemmy.zip
      9·
      24 hours ago

      Yeah, the “new Constitution” would be a feeding frenzy and we may as well get called “Free Corporations of America” or something, which is what we really revolted from England: the oligarchs in mainland England had sway over the King and it ignored the colonies until we were overtaxed and hardly represented.

      • Auli@lemmy.caEnglish
        71·
        20 hours ago

        You had rich white dudes who didn’t want to pay taxes. Oh…