The Political Page, T+222 -- August 30, 2017

Quick! Without looking, "who is on" the US $2 bill?

The presidential pardon. I didn't read much of the op-ed in today's WSJ on the presidential pardon of the Arizona sheriff, but what little I read reinforced my positive thoughts about the Founding Fathers and the US Constitution. From the op-ed:

Alexander Hamilton devoted a substantial portion of Federalist No. 74 to defending the provision. “Humanity and good policy,” he argued, “conspire to dictate that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered.” And a single decision maker, he continued, would be more likely to be guided by the right kinds of considerations as well as a strong sense of responsibility in exercising this power.

Hamilton did not see the pardon as a challenge to the rule of law, but the reverse—a correction of law’s inherent imperfection. “The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity,” he wrote “that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.” The pardon was created as a way of tempering justice with mercy. It is, wrote the great Chief Justice John Marshall in U.S. v. Wilson (1833), “an act of grace.”

There is a picture of President Gerald Ford accompanying the story. I assume that was related to the "Nixon pardon."