If Biden Pardoned Son Because "Politics Infected the Process," Shouldn't He Also Pardon Trump?

 In a Sunday shocker, President Joe Biden pardoned son Hunter for any "offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024." This would include his convection for lying on an application to purchase a firearm, his guilt plea to tax charges and possible corrupt behavior in attempting to work deals with business counterparts in Ukraine and China. Biden issued this pardon despite a pledge he would not do so because "raw politics" infected the process, leading to a "miscarriage of justice." If that is so, and if he really is intent on bringing us all together, shouldn't he also pardon Donald Trump?

Now you could argue that such a pardon is unneeded because, once he takes office, Trump is immune. That immunity ends, however, once he steps down. 

Now don't get me wrong. There is no doubt in my mind that Trump most certainly instigated an attempted coup on January 6, 2020. I am also convinced that he actively obstructed investigators who were seeking confidential records. But he has already been tried in the court of popular opinion, and somehow managed to be the first GOP candidate in 20 years to win the popular vote. Many of his supporters are convinced that, just like Hunter Biden, Trump was the victim of "raw politics." I disagree with that sentiment but have to acknowledge that many voters feel that way. 

If Biden were truly concerned about what Republicans like to call lawfare, he'd pardon Trump. If he wanted to bring us together, he'd pardon Trump. He instead is looking out for a wayward son who attempted to use his father's name to make money. 

Happy Birthday to The Poet President

He was a "war president." In fact, the war over which he presided may have claimed more American lives than all other wars combined. But he's not remembered that way. You wouldn't catch him strutting around in a flight suit.

He was the poet president. The man with the kind yet sad smile. And he hated the killing business. Though born and raised in the frontier, he never hunted, not even as a boy. He'd give Dick Cheney a raincheck. Although religious revivals were all the rage, he never joined a church. He'd give Pat Robertson a raincheck, too.

To his generals' dismay, he had an annoying habit of pardoning young men who fell asleep on sentry duty or who deserted. "If Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs how can he help their running away with him?" He often asked whether a "soldier can better serve the country dead than living."

Happy birthday, Abe. The country misses you.

Lincoln was a Republican, but his was no party of oppression. erialism. Iraq (and Iran) would have no appeal to him. Here's what Kurt Vonnegut thinks.

[I]t is almost always a mistake to mention Abraham Lincoln in a speech about something or somebody else. He always steals the show. I am about to quote him.

Lincoln was only a Congressman when he said in 1848 what I am about to echo. He was heartbroken and humiliated by our war on Mexico, which had never attacked us.

We were making California our own, and a lot of other people and properties, and doing it as though butchering Mexican soldiers who were only defending their homeland against invaders wasn’t murder.

What other stuff besides California? Well, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

The person congressman Lincoln had in mind when he said what he said was James Polk, our president at the time. Abraham Lincoln said of Polk, his president, our armed forces’ commander-in-chief: "Trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory, that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood — that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy, he plunged into war."

Holy smokes! I almost said, "Holy shit!" And I thought I was a writer!

"Now he belongs to the ages."