A Founding Father's Fear: Why Presidential Pardons Worried George Mason

by Nomad

The Atlantic posted an article on the following subject the other day and I thought it deserved a little more attention.

"In Order to Form a More Perfect Union"

Back in the summer of 1787, delegates of the Constitutional Convention came together in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution and thereby, address the problems of a weak central government under the Articles of Confederation. There were many vested interests in the crowd of delegates and getting the representatives from each colony to agree was not an easy task. 

  

The Articles of the Confederation had been written under the threat of war, as a means of uniting the colonies against the threat of British retaliation for the declaration of independence. 

It was, in effect, a contractual agreement among the 13 original states of the United States of America a set of clearly written rules for how the states' "league of friendship" would be organized. The Articles had stressed the sovereignty of individual member states, a prerequisite for any agreement. 

Presidential Pardons and the Question of Justice

by Nomad

As reported a couple of months ago, one of the last official acts of President Obama was to commute the remainder of Chelsea Manning's 35-year sentence.
On Wednesday, Manning walked out of the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, bringing to a conclusion, as the New York Times called, "one of the most extraordinary criminal cases in American history over the leaking of government secrets to the public."

Manning and Snowden

The other day I was reading an online discussion regarding the subject of presidential pardons. Specifically, the topic was whether President Obama was right in pardoning Chelsea Manning and not pardoning former National Security Agency contractor  Edward Snowden. 

Snowden, who currently lives in exile in Russia,  faces charges under the Espionage Act of 1918, a law the constitutionality of which has been contested ever since it was enacted. 

Among other things, that law makes it a crime to convey information with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies during wartime.  

The campaign to pardon Snowden picked up momentum after Oliver Stone's film but sputtered and ran out of gas. Indeed, all members of  House Select Committee on Intelligence, (13 Republicans and nine Democrats, ) sent a letter to the White House urging against a pardon for Snowden.