If your brain works like this, you are obviously hoping for a real buffet from the Donald Trump presidency. Susan Bolton, the senior U.S. District Judge for Arizona, seemed to balk at President Trump’s pardon of Maricopa County’s former sheriff/local grotesque Joseph Arpaio. This is already a little surprising, since the presidential power to pardon federal offences has always been treated as quite absolute and unconditional. This theory, I suspect, may wreck upon actual historical examples of presidential shamelessness in the use of pardons. To take an obvious one: how, upon this theory, are we to regard President Ford’s pardon of his precursor Richard Nixon?

Source: National Post September 01, 2017 16:30 UTC