{"id":11171,"date":"2007-06-19T10:30:03","date_gmt":"2007-06-19T14:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11171.html"},"modified":"2007-06-19T10:30:03","modified_gmt":"2007-06-19T14:30:03","slug":"what-it-takes-to-get-a-pardon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-it-takes-to-get-a-pardon\/","title":{"rendered":"What it takes to get a pardon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Simon has a very good piece<\/a> today about a political topic du jour: pardons. Specifically, Simon notes the story of Anthony Circosta, the kind of guy who deserves a pardon, and contrasts him with Scooter Libby, the kind of guy who doesn’t. (thanks to K.Z. for the tip)<\/p>\n

Circosta isn’t political and isn’t a celebrity, but he is a decorated veteran of the war in Iraq, where he led a platoon of soldiers in the Sunni Triangle. Upon returning home to Massachusetts, Circosta, who earned a Bronze Star, once again volunteered to help protect people, applying to his local police force.<\/p>\n

But there was a problem. When he was 13, Circosta shot another kid in the arm with a BB gun. His “victim” was unhurt — the BB didn’t even break the other kid’s skin — but 13-year-old Circosta was charged and convicted with assault. The incident disqualifies him from becoming a police officer.<\/p>\n

Circosta petitioned then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for a pardon, which the state Board of Pardons recommended he receive. Romney refused. Twice. “I’ve done everything I can to give back to my state and my community and my country, and to get brushed aside is very frustrating,” Circosta recently told a reporter.<\/p>\n

As Simon explained, Circosta would have been far better off if Romney saw a political upside to granting him a pardon.<\/p>\n

It is not as if Circosta is some serious, unrepentant criminal like, well, like Scooter Libby, for instance, whom Romney says he might pardon if Romney ever reaches the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

Romney says he had a standard when it came to handing out pardons as governor: He didn’t want to overturn jury verdicts. And so he never granted a single pardon in his four years in office, a fact he is enormously proud of today and repeatedly raises in his speeches.<\/p>\n

But Romney’s standard is flexible when it comes to Libby, who was Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and whose cause has been taken up by the conservative Republican establishment.<\/p>\n

And Romney’s true standard seems to be: No pardons for nobodies. Somebodies can catch a break.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Romney’s campaign explained the former governor’s reasoning. It didn’t help.
\n
\nA Romney spokesperson told Simon that the “charge [against Circosta] was felony assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Our executive clemency guidelines discouraged pardons for felony firearm offenses if the purpose of the pardon was to obtain a license to carry.”<\/p>\n

Remember, Circosta was 13 at the time, went on to put himself through college, and then served with distinction in a war. Now he wants to be a police officer. Romney is unfazed.<\/p>\n

But if you out a covert CIA agent during a war, lie about it, and are convicted by a jury, Romney is all ears.<\/p>\n

Romney provided part of the answer on June 5 at a Republican debate in Manchester, N.H., in which CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates, “Would you pardon Scooter Libby?”<\/p>\n

Romney replied: “This is one of those situations where I go back to my record as governor. I didn’t pardon anybody as governor, because I didn’t want to overturn a jury. But in this case, you have a prosecutor who clearly abused prosecutorial discretion by going after somebody when he already knew that the source of the leak was Richard Armitage. He’d been told that. So he went on a political vendetta.”<\/p>\n

“Was that a yes?” Blitzer asked.<\/p>\n

“It’s worth looking at that,” Romney said. “I will study it very closely if I’m lucky enough to be president. And I’d keep that option open.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Republican circles, this makes perfect sense. Indeed, to hear the GOP tell it, we need tougher sentences, inflexible mandatory-minimums, and anything that smacks of “amnesty” is beyond the pale. Except for Scooter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Simon recommends that Romney, should he become president, take another look at Anthony Circosta’s request, because, “every now and then, the nobodies deserve a break, too.”<\/p>\n

Maybe if Circosta ponied up some campaign cash, he’d have better luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger Simon has a very good piece today about a political topic du jour: pardons. Specifically, Simon notes the story of Anthony Circosta, the kind of guy who deserves a pardon, and contrasts him with Scooter Libby, the kind of guy who doesn’t. (thanks to K.Z. for the tip) Circosta isn’t political and isn’t a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}