Pardons

Birmingham's mayor offered a blanket pardon to thousands of demonstrators charged in this caldron of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, a mostly symbolic gesture he acknowledged few might actually want. Many blacks who braved police dogs and fire hoses four decades ago say they carry their misdemeanor record as a badge of honor. Mayor Larry Langford said he expected many would reject the mass pardon, but he thought it was important to offer. Gwendolyn C. Webb-Happling was 14 when she was arrested in Birmingham in 1963 and spent a week in custody, charged with demonstrating without a permit.

It is being described as a full-court, all-out campaign, waged in the last days of the Bush administration by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, to get George W. Bush to grant a full pardon to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The effort failed, but the snub by the Texas Lone Ranger has left Cheney furious. The New York Daily News quoted a Cheney associate as saying that Cheney "tried to make it happen right up until the very end," pressing his case in many conversations, both in person and on the phone.

It is being described as a full-court, all-out campaign, waged in the last days of the Bush administration by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, to get President Bush to grant a full pardon to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The effort failed, but the snub by the Texas Lone Ranger has left Cheney furious. The New York Daily News quoted a Cheney associate as saying that Cheney "tried to make it happen right up until the very end," pressing his case in many conversations, both in person and on the phone.

In the 16 years since his release from prison, disgraced junk-bond king Michael Milken has beaten prostate cancer, raised hundreds of millions of dollars for medical research and reshaped an image tarnished by a 1990 conviction for securities fraud. One thing he's been unable to do is win a presidential pardon, despite the support of some of the country's most influential people. Before he left office Jan.

On his last full day in office, President Bush formally struck down the clemency petitions of junk-bond financier Michael Milken and some high-profile former politicians, including Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Edwin Edwards, the Justice Department said Tuesday. The former president also denied petitions for two men who became polarizing symbols of their eras.

Re "Bush commutes terms of convicted border agents," Jan. 20 President Bush's decision not to pardon border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, but rather to commute the remainder of their sentences, is just and appropriate. Eleven or 12 years in prison is excessive. However, Ramos and Compean are felons who shot a person and then lied about the encounter. Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, the suspected smuggler, is clearly a disreputable fellow. But U.S. lawmen are not above the law. They must be held to account for their actions and for abuse of their authority.

Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, the two former Border Patrol agents whose prison sentences were commuted by President Bush this week, made an awful lot of mistakes on that day in February 2005 when they met Osvaldo Aldrete Davila near the U.S.-Mexico border. At the time, Aldrete Davila was crossing illegally into the United States in a van carrying 743 pounds of marijuana. When he saw the agents coming toward him, he turned back toward Mexico.

In 1975, when I had just turned 9, my father was killed by terrorists. He was supposed to be home early on that Jan. 24 for a family celebration of my birthday and that of my brother, who had just turned 11. Instead, while my father was at a business lunch at the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York's financial district, a bomb exploded, killing him and three others. One of my father's colleagues was decapitated, and silverware from the table was lodged in the torsos of the other victims.