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Read other letters about this article
As if it mattered in the first place.
Glenn is relying on failure to follow "established procedure" in order to justify his condemnation of the Rich Pardon, and deliberately ignoring the mitigating circumstances -- or dismissing them because "ordinary citizens" can't take advantage of such mitigations, not if they follow "established procedures" -- when the whole thing was and is a little bit of ginned up OUTRAGE!!!™ brought to us by the howler monkeys of the perpetually put upon anti-Clinton cohort, and they will not let is rest.
The President -- any President -- has plenary pardon powers. "Procedure" is all well and good, but guess what? The President can pardon anyone for anything at any time regardless of procedure, and nobody can do a g-d thing about it. It's in the Constitution. Don't like it? You know what to do.
The thing of it is Marc Rich's pardon was and is that it doesn't really matter. The ones that matter -- say Ford's pardon of Nixon, or the pardons of the Iran-Contra criminals -- have lasting consequences for the nation (take a look at what's going on around you, for example.) It's a stretch to claim that the Rich pardon matters because it reinforces the corruption of the Palace, when many of them do that but don't have the kind of policy consequences that the I-C pardons did.
A Palace operates on a personal level as well as a policy level, and in its personal operations, mutual grooming and back-scratching is almost ritualized and absolutely necessary. Rich knew the right people, groomed the right people, and made his case to the right people and got his pardon. "Ordinary citizens" probably can't do that. Yet somehow they get pardons, too, and sometimes those pardons don't follow "procedures" either.
They don't have to.
To change that system requires somewhat more than most Americans care to devote to the task.
