PARDON MORE THAN THE TURKEY

AFTER the GOP took that thumpin' in the November elections, President
Bush wants the voters to give his party and his leadership a second
chance. That makes this a good time for Bush to use his presidential
pardon power to give others a second chance. This holiday season,
Dubya should not limit his presidential pardon power to one lucky turkey.

Thanks to draconian federal drug sentences, the number of federal
prisoners reached a record 193,989 on Nov. 9 -- that's a steep
increase from 150,000 in 2003. The prison population is not growing
because the feds are locking up drug kingpins. As the U.S. Sentencing
Commission noted in a 2002 report, while the 1986 federal drug law
promised to go after "serious" and "major" traffickers, the majority
of federal cocaine offenders performed low-level functions. The
percentage of biggies behind bars is shrinking, while the low-life
chump class grows.

In 2000, the commission reported, the proportion of
importers/high-level suppliers shrank to 1.4 percent of the cocaine
offenders, down from 8.8 percent in 1995; the proportion of
organizers/leaders fell from 12.7 percent in 1995 to 5.3 percent. It
is another sign of too-big government, when taxpayers have to
bankroll long sentences for the least culpable criminals.

Clarence Aaron was a college student in 1992 when he introduced two
dealers to each other. They paid him $1,500. Nine kilograms of
cocaine were traded. A second deal didn't happen. Yet when the feds
arrested the group, they charged Aaron with dealing 24 kilograms of
crack cocaine, because one dealer was going to turn the cocaine into
crack and the second deal had been set up. Aaron failed to cut a deal
by pleading guilty and testifying against others.

Aaron's sentence? Life without parole. That's right, Aaron wasn't in
charge, he wasn't a professional dealer, he had been charged with a
first-time nonviolent drug offense and he's serving the same sentence
as the treasonous FBI-agent-turned-spy Robert Hanssen.

You might expect that sort of over-the-top sentence in the Middle
Ages or some hellhole dictatorship that does not value human life. An
enlightened nation, however, has no business locking up a kid and
throwing away the key for life -- because he did something both
criminal and stupid when he was, as Bush once described his early
years, "young and irresponsible."

I can't help but believe that if a white college kid had screwed up
like this, unlike the African-American Aaron, he would have received
a more fitting sentence.

Bush should commute Aaron's sentence this year, because it is the
right thing to do. He also should work with the U.S. pardon attorney
to release other prisoners serving sentences that far exceed their
crimes. While in office, Bush has issued 97 pardons and two
commutations. Two commutations are too few.

Julie Stewart, the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums,
hears that the Bushies don't want to commute sentences that comply
with guidelines, no matter how barbaric they are. "Why have a pardon
attorney's office?" she asked rhetorically. "The Founding Fathers
gave (the pardon) to the president for the very purpose of exercising
it when the punishment doesn't fit the crime."

Politically, Bush could use pardons to show that he cares about
people who live outside the GOP circle. Let Bush show America the
president who boasted in his 2004 State of the Union speech that
America is "the land of the second chance" that he walks the walk.

Commutations also would appeal to libertarian-leaning Republicans who
recoil at drug-war excesses. These are voters who harken to the words
of the late economist Milton Friedman, who wrote in an open letter to
then-drug czar Bill Bennett in 1989, "Drugs are a tragedy for
addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a
disaster for society, for users and non-users alike."

As for law-and-order types, who don't mind throwing other people's
children behind bars for life, Bush can use mercy to appeal to those
voters as well.

Last month, a federal judge in Texas sentenced Border Patrol agents
Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos to 11 and 12 years in prison
for shooting a fleeing drug smuggler in the buttocks, not filing the
necessary reports and depriving the smuggler of his Fourth Amendment
right to be free from illegal seizure. That's an insane sentence for
two men who worked in service to this country and made a split-second
mistake. Bush should commute their sentences before either man has to
report to prison.

Let me be clear: I support long-sentences for violent criminals and
repeat offenders, as well as the ultimate sentence -- lethal
injection -- for repeat killers such as Clarence Ray Allen and
Stanley Tookie Williams, who rightfully were executed in San Quentin Prison.

But I cannot countenance meting out the harshest sentences to people
who can be redeemed and have something to contribute to society.
Clarence Aaron has served enough time behind bars. Bush should set him free.