By Brian Carnell

Thursday, February 22, 2001

I couldn't find a transcript online, but singer Robbie Robertson had the best line of Wednesday night's Grammy awards when he took a shot at Bill Clinton saying that apparently Leonard Peltier "wasn't Marc Rich enough" to earn a pardon from the former president.

Ouch. Even as a certified Clinton hater, the whole pardon mess strikes me as unbelievable and really makes it mystifying why he didn't go ahead and pardon Peltier. Certainly he my have taken flack from law enforcement from doing so, but given the storm of negative publicity the president had to know the various other pardons would cause I'm surprised he didn't go ahead and throw a pardon for Peltier in the mix (he did, after all, pardon two women convicted for their role in terrorist bombings).

The real interesting aspect to Clinton's pardons, however, is the racial angle (or lack thereof). Whatever the reason, African Americans went to the polls in overwhelming numbers to support Clinton twice and then Gore a third time. And how did the President thank them for their support? He did throw a few token pardons to some particularly egregious prison sentences for non-violent drug offenders, but for the most part Clinton left the impression that the non-violent drug offenders most worthy of pardoning were those who could afford large contributions to the Democratic Party.

U.S. Attorney Todd Jones prosecuted Carlos Vignali for helping Colombian cocaine cartels launder millions of dollars of drug money. Vignali paid Hillary Clinton's brother $200,000 to lobby for his pardon, and miracle of miracles Vignali was indeed pardoned.

Writing for Salon.Com, Joan Walsh report that Jones told Good Morning America, "This was a straight-up drug dealer, a source of cocaine, proven at trial, convicted by a jury and sentenced to a fair sentence... [Vignali's pardon] further erodes any confidence that the public, particularly communities of color, may have that federal drug laws are enforced fairly." In fact Clinton achieved the sort of "success" that his predecessors could have only dreamed of when it came to the drug war. By working closely with the most hardcore pro-drug war Republicans in Congress, the Clinton administration managed to send twice as many people to federal prison in its eight years than the Reagan and Bush administrations had been able to do in 12 (even with a Republican Congress, Reagan had never been able to marshal through a Draconian anti-drug law which Clinton successfully pushed and signed).

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Discuss (1 Replies) | Printer Friendly