Political Quotes

“My amendment prohibits funds from this bill from being used to transfer or detail employees to the Office of the Pardon Attorney to support the administration's so-called clemency project. The President possesses the constitutional authority ``to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States.'' However, in the first 5 years of his administration, President Obama granted fewer pardons and commutations than any of his recent predecessors. Last year, the Deputy Attorney General took the unprecedented step of asking the defense bar for assistance in recruiting candidates for executive clemency, specifically for Federal drug offenders. The Justice Department intends to beef up its Office of the Pardon Attorney to process applications for commutations of sentence for Federal drug offenders. The Justice Department is also accepting pro bono legal work from the ACLU and other defense attorney organizations for this initiative. This amendment would prohibit that. The Constitution gives the President the pardon power, but the fact that the President has chosen to use that power solely on behalf of drug offenders shows that this is little more than a political ploy by the administration to bypass Congress. This is not, as the Founders intended, an exercise of the power to provide for ``exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt,'' but the use of the pardon power to benefit an entire class of offenders duly convicted in a court of law.…”