> “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law,” the Peruvian president Óscar Benavides is claimed to have said in the 20th century
I found it attributed to a Paraguayan dictator, with comment that it is attributed to many other people, too. Sounds like something you'd expect to come from Rome, though.
When I travel, people often say words to the effect of “what is it with you Americans and your guns?” I usually reply, “we have a Constitution.” I don’t add WHICH CAN BE AMENDED but that is a salient point. People say they are for life without parole in lieu of the death penalty. This cannot exist so long as there is pardon power for both federal and state crimes by the appropriate executive. We should have more bona fide movements to change the Constitution where it is considered outdated, abused or where the Supreme Court has got it wrong. The debates alone would clarify issues and, I believe, actually reduce polarization.
What was it you wrote about Biden’s Witness Protection Program, I mean Criminal Forgiveness Program. I understand they are stand alone projects, but still I don’t recall such a robust piece as this. Also Slick Willie let go a few beauties as I recall.
I can’t say I was reporting (or alive) during the Clinton presidency, but I absolutely wrote critically about Biden’s pardons (and both Biden and Clinton are noted in the piece)
I make it a point not to complain about any preemptive pardon by Trump that smacks of political motivation, any more than I will complain about Biden’s. They both issued preemptive pardons for the same reason and the same kind of pardonee. Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, and Rudy Giuliani were all exposed to threats of prosecution for no other or better reason than their exposure to political controversy. Their pardons were meant to ensure that they would not be exposed to further controversy, as well as prosecution threats.
Even the first-term pardon of Michael Flynn, who was convicted but not yet sentenced, was justifiable under this rubric. That pardon l, though not preemptive, could be taken as a demonstration of the president’s position against allowing prosecutions to proceed against acts with merely political implications. However, that just makes the pardons to people like Robert Henry Harshbarger look like something else altogether. These are law enforcement decisions driven purely by political influence, with no regard whatsoever to the nature of the legal violation or the post-conviction record of the offender. We are supposed to have an independent law enforcement agency to keep these decisions from the taint of political considerations.
The Framers assumed that law enforcement was safe within the executive branch. It took less than 250 years to prove them wrong.
Just in case you forgot: Biden granted pardons to over 5,500 people with his auto pen 🤪 a historical record, including his son, grandfathering all his misdeeds going back many years. His son interfered with foreign policy in Ukraine, China, Russia & Romania.
A British politician, was told, said this to his friends: ""Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends". The variations are endless, the results the same, alas.
What Harshbarger did was illegal and I'm not defending it. It is, however, the case that for decades the FDA has arguably been unreasonably controlling, restrictive, punitive, and slow (not to mention protective) when it comes to authorizing importation of demonstrably identical and high quality chemicals and pharmaceuticals from abroad, especially from India and China. In extreme cases these has led to stubborn, zero-tolerance bans in the face of severe domestic supply shortage on foreign imports of things like Adderall and baby formula despite no evidence or other rational basis to believe there were any safety concerns. Again, what Harshbarger did was clearly criminal given what the law requires, however, the law's justification is expressed in terms of safety and preventing fraud as to identify and purity of a substance, and one may reasonably doubt whether there was any actual issue with the medicines provided to patients. In my own dealings with Chinese companies I've found that, if anything, the quality and purity was higher than what can be sourced domestically.
Baby formula? Really? Have you forgotten Chinese baby formula laced with melamine? Killed six infants and injured hundreds of thousands. That was back in 2008 and things are better now. But still the doubt lingers. In any case Gabe’s point is the sheer number of pardons, their political nature and the removal of any court ordered fine or restitution, not any single particular instance.
Read up on the baby formula shortage of 2022-23. In that case, the major domestic source has a botulism contamination issue, so it's not like China has a monopoly on incidents. The stuff that wasn't allowed to be imported normally was from respected, high-standards European counties with no recent records of any issues at all, like Holland, Germany, the UK, and Ireland. The administration was not able to coordinate well enough to cut all the red tape and ensure sufficient imports to remedy the shortages for over a year, and because it could not make legal guarantees to potential importers and transporters, it even had to implement extreme measures such as using the DPA and having -US military aircraft- fly over to those countries to pick up the stuff and fly it back, when of course using normal trade and logistics companies would have been as fast and considerably less expensive. It then crowed about how well it pulled off its effort to track the shortages, but not, you know, actually fix them in a timely way.
The 22-23 baby formula shortage was due to recalls because of salmonella contamination. Right now, in 2025, there are baby formula recalls from one manufacturer because of potential botulism contamination. In both cases the manufacturers promptly issued recalls. In the 2008 Chinese case the manufacturer knowingly added melamine to its formula to cut costs and there were no recalls until the situation had become dire. Chinese consumers heard about the contamination and simply refused to buy any baby formula manufactured in China, leading to massive shortages in that country. Knowingly adulterating a product with a potentially lethal substance and suffering a manufacturing error and promptly dealing with it are very different.
> “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law,” the Peruvian president Óscar Benavides is claimed to have said in the 20th century
I found it attributed to a Paraguayan dictator, with comment that it is attributed to many other people, too. Sounds like something you'd expect to come from Rome, though.
it’s official. We are a banana republic.
When I travel, people often say words to the effect of “what is it with you Americans and your guns?” I usually reply, “we have a Constitution.” I don’t add WHICH CAN BE AMENDED but that is a salient point. People say they are for life without parole in lieu of the death penalty. This cannot exist so long as there is pardon power for both federal and state crimes by the appropriate executive. We should have more bona fide movements to change the Constitution where it is considered outdated, abused or where the Supreme Court has got it wrong. The debates alone would clarify issues and, I believe, actually reduce polarization.
What was it you wrote about Biden’s Witness Protection Program, I mean Criminal Forgiveness Program. I understand they are stand alone projects, but still I don’t recall such a robust piece as this. Also Slick Willie let go a few beauties as I recall.
Just saying this is not a new thing is all.
I can’t say I was reporting (or alive) during the Clinton presidency, but I absolutely wrote critically about Biden’s pardons (and both Biden and Clinton are noted in the piece)
List the offending pardons under Biden that were contribution and/or political party driven or stfu Sean
I make it a point not to complain about any preemptive pardon by Trump that smacks of political motivation, any more than I will complain about Biden’s. They both issued preemptive pardons for the same reason and the same kind of pardonee. Hunter Biden, Adam Schiff, and Rudy Giuliani were all exposed to threats of prosecution for no other or better reason than their exposure to political controversy. Their pardons were meant to ensure that they would not be exposed to further controversy, as well as prosecution threats.
Even the first-term pardon of Michael Flynn, who was convicted but not yet sentenced, was justifiable under this rubric. That pardon l, though not preemptive, could be taken as a demonstration of the president’s position against allowing prosecutions to proceed against acts with merely political implications. However, that just makes the pardons to people like Robert Henry Harshbarger look like something else altogether. These are law enforcement decisions driven purely by political influence, with no regard whatsoever to the nature of the legal violation or the post-conviction record of the offender. We are supposed to have an independent law enforcement agency to keep these decisions from the taint of political considerations.
The Framers assumed that law enforcement was safe within the executive branch. It took less than 250 years to prove them wrong.
Just in case you forgot: Biden granted pardons to over 5,500 people with his auto pen 🤪 a historical record, including his son, grandfathering all his misdeeds going back many years. His son interfered with foreign policy in Ukraine, China, Russia & Romania.
Aloha. From the COCONUT WIRELESS. ................................................................................................
A British politician, was told, said this to his friends: ""Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends". The variations are endless, the results the same, alas.
Hopefully he is not using the autopen to make these pardons.
What Harshbarger did was illegal and I'm not defending it. It is, however, the case that for decades the FDA has arguably been unreasonably controlling, restrictive, punitive, and slow (not to mention protective) when it comes to authorizing importation of demonstrably identical and high quality chemicals and pharmaceuticals from abroad, especially from India and China. In extreme cases these has led to stubborn, zero-tolerance bans in the face of severe domestic supply shortage on foreign imports of things like Adderall and baby formula despite no evidence or other rational basis to believe there were any safety concerns. Again, what Harshbarger did was clearly criminal given what the law requires, however, the law's justification is expressed in terms of safety and preventing fraud as to identify and purity of a substance, and one may reasonably doubt whether there was any actual issue with the medicines provided to patients. In my own dealings with Chinese companies I've found that, if anything, the quality and purity was higher than what can be sourced domestically.
Baby formula? Really? Have you forgotten Chinese baby formula laced with melamine? Killed six infants and injured hundreds of thousands. That was back in 2008 and things are better now. But still the doubt lingers. In any case Gabe’s point is the sheer number of pardons, their political nature and the removal of any court ordered fine or restitution, not any single particular instance.
Read up on the baby formula shortage of 2022-23. In that case, the major domestic source has a botulism contamination issue, so it's not like China has a monopoly on incidents. The stuff that wasn't allowed to be imported normally was from respected, high-standards European counties with no recent records of any issues at all, like Holland, Germany, the UK, and Ireland. The administration was not able to coordinate well enough to cut all the red tape and ensure sufficient imports to remedy the shortages for over a year, and because it could not make legal guarantees to potential importers and transporters, it even had to implement extreme measures such as using the DPA and having -US military aircraft- fly over to those countries to pick up the stuff and fly it back, when of course using normal trade and logistics companies would have been as fast and considerably less expensive. It then crowed about how well it pulled off its effort to track the shortages, but not, you know, actually fix them in a timely way.
The 22-23 baby formula shortage was due to recalls because of salmonella contamination. Right now, in 2025, there are baby formula recalls from one manufacturer because of potential botulism contamination. In both cases the manufacturers promptly issued recalls. In the 2008 Chinese case the manufacturer knowingly added melamine to its formula to cut costs and there were no recalls until the situation had become dire. Chinese consumers heard about the contamination and simply refused to buy any baby formula manufactured in China, leading to massive shortages in that country. Knowingly adulterating a product with a potentially lethal substance and suffering a manufacturing error and promptly dealing with it are very different.