When Bill Clinton left the Presidency in 2001, he was embroiled in controversy over giving pardons to over two hundred individuals for drug offenses and white collar crimes, meaning financial violations. The turmoil went on for weeks, with Fox News Channel and conservative talk show hosts widely condemning his actions, and claiming he had committed insufferable harm.
But when Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee left office in 2007, he pardoned people who had committed heinous murders. And now, outgoing Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, supposedly a very bright and talented politician who had considered the Presidency, and had refused to pardon two African American sisters of a minor crime, but released them on condition that one sister would give a kidney donation to the other, which occurred after they were released, an ethical quandary medically. has gone beyond the pale completely!
Now, Barbour has given pardons to four people convicted of murder who had been allowed as inmates to work at the Governor’s mansion, along with at least 25 other people convicted of murder, manslaughter or homicide, a stunning development hard to explain.
And under the law, neither Huckabee back in 2007 nor Barbour today needs to do any explaining of the pardons, certainly far more heinous than any of the pardons Bill Clinton did in 2001!
This is another example of the double standard that exists, which allows Republicans a “free pass”, while Democrats are under constant attack by conservatives in radio and on Fox News Channel!