STRAIGHT DOPE ON PARDONS

It's tough luck for America that Bill Clinton pardoned tax-dodging, fat cat
Marc Rich under such hilariously suspicious circumstances.

Otherwise, the national news media might now be in a feeding frenzy over
something worthwhile and -- dare we say, good? -- that Clinton did as he
was exiting the White House with the presidential silverware under his shirt.

As all "Hardball" watchers know, because of Rich, Pardongate is mostly
about whether a fugitive sleaze-ball with inside connections purchased a
presidential pardon with generous political contributions.

If America had been luckier, Pardongate would be about 21 unrich but
more-worthy folks who got their presidential pardons for free -- the
victims of the drug war that Clinton sprung from prison in his final days.

You can read all about the Rich pardon -- and how even some of the blindest
Clinton true-believers now claim they have been sickened by it -- in this
week's Time and Newsweek, where the ex-prez is still hogging the covers.

If you want to read about the drug criminals Clinton liberated from
America's prison-industrial complex, you'll have to head to Rolling Stone,
the only national magazine that persistently gives a hoot about the
collateral damage the War on (some) Drugs is doing to America.

"Twenty One Drug Prisoners Freed" is only a small part of Rolling Stone's
College 2001 issue, which includes an article on students at 70 campuses
who've organized to fight a law that prohibits federal financial aid going
to anyone with an adult drug conviction (but not to convicted murderers).

It profiles a few of the 21 low-level, nonviolent drug criminals Clinton
pardoned after lobbying from advocacy groups like Families Against
Mandatory Minimums and Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone's founder/owner and No. 1
Clinton-groupie.

According to Rolling Stone, the pardonees were people like Ann Coffman,
released after serving nearly eight years of her 85-year mandatory slammer
time for operating a spreadsheet for her drug-dealing boyfriend. And
Loretta Fish, released after serving six years of her minimum 18-year
stretch for keeping house for her drug-dealing boyfriends. And Ching Chin,
serving 15 years-plus for being a translator during a heroin deal.

Not even Rolling Stone thinks these characters were innocent babes.

The point is, their mandatory-minimum prison time was grossly
disproportionate to their crimes. Also, the snitch-based system used to
prosecute drug cases results in couriers getting 15 years while upper-level
drug sellers who blab get only one year.

It's swell that 21 people are free because of Clinton. But as Rolling Stone
points out, untold thousands of other nonviolent, low-level drug criminals
equally deserving of pardons remain in prison.

It's too bad the Rich pardon stole the media spotlight. It's also too bad
Clinton made his decision to pardon the drug criminals so discreetly, and
only when he knew it would cause him no political pain. But it is really
too bad Clinton didn't have the courage to pardon drug war victims on a
sweeping, Harry Browne scale -- and do it even six months ago.

He might have sparked a valuable national debate on our ugly $20 billion a
year War on (some) Drugs -- whose un-American cruelties, moral hypocrisies
and overzealous stupidities are on display today not on the covers of Time
or Newsweek but in the movie "Traffic."

Bill Steigerwald is an associate editor and writer at the Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review. He has written a weekly column about magazines for the Los
Angeles Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Trib since 1987.