Pardon Me

Every year I get a few parking tickets. You think that’s a coincidence? I think not.

One afternoon last summer I walked out to my car to find it gone. I thought maybe I’d forgotten where I had parked it. I finally located it a couple blocks away with a ticket on the windshield. The ticket claimed that I had been obstructing a driveway. When I went to the city’s website the citation included pictures of a car that looked like mine parked right across an entire driveway.

I was dumbfounded and amazed. The city had hired a truck to move my car in front of the driveway, they snapped the pictures, issued the ticket and then moved my car two blocks away. Clearly, I had done something to offend the Powers That Be at City Hall and they targeted me for harassment. But you can’t fight City Hall and so I paid the fine and moved on with my life.

Until now. I’m going to apply for one of those Presidential pardons I keep hearing so darn much about! Apparently, you can get one even for crimes you actually committed (as opposed to being framed for as I was!) or for crimes you haven’t yet committed but might someday or for crimes you’ll never commit. Something like that. I’m not sure about the details. I just know they’re handing out pardons like those “I Voted” stickers you get on election day. Apparently, all you have to do is show up. Maybe you need a photo ID. But I hear the Democrats are fighting that.

Before he left office, Joe Biden pardoned his son for crimes he actually admitted to having committed and then he pardoned his siblings and other family members for crimes they haven’t been accused of and then he pardoned a bunch of other people because he thought they might be accused of something. Along the say he pardoned hundreds of people who did commit crimes, but ones that Biden thought should not have been crimes. The cynic in me suggests that he pardoned all those other people so that his really egregious pardon of his son would get lost in the mix.

Then Trump showed up and started pardoning more people left and right. Okay, well, only right. He pardoned 1,500 people involved in the January 6th insurrection riot at the Capitol. These people had been charged and either convicted by a jury of their peers or pled before trial, admitting their guilt. Trump, who was the chief insurrectionist himself and escaped conviction only by getting himself reelected — and with a big assist from the Supreme Court — claimed they were political prisoners. No, they weren’t. They’re thugs.

We have now officially entered the Two Bit Banana Republic phase of our democracy. We expect this from Trump. In fact, he spent a year or more saying he was going to do exactly this. A convicted criminal himself, he has never had any respect for the rule of law.

But Biden goes around sanctimoniously pontificating about his love for our democratic institutions. And then he pardons his son after saying repeatedly that he wouldn’t. And his son was clearly guilty of what he had been charged with. He violated Federal gun laws and cheated on his taxes to the tune of $1.5 million — two things that liberals would be apoplectic about if it were anyone else. A lot of Americans would love to owe $1.5 million in taxes and they’d gladly pay it if they could just have the income that produced that kind of tax bill in the first place. And to top it all off, Hunter Biden came into all that money by peddling influence with his father.

With his actions, Biden obliterated any moral authority he had to criticize Trump on this score and he badly undercut his own party in its attempt to keep our liberal democracy alive. Donald Trump represents a direct and despicable assault on liberal democracy. Joe Biden represents an insidious assault on the very same thing.

Before I get around to dreading the next four years, let me take a moment to say good riddance to Joe Biden.

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