Abolish the presidential pardon power - The Boston Globe

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

60% : But I've changed my mind.
50% : But now that the precedent has been established and repeated, it is all but certain to be exploited by future presidents -- starting with Trump, who returns to the White House next week.
48% : To my mind, the Framers of the Constitution were wise to grant presidents the unfettered "power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States."
47% : So I continued to think that Alexander Hamilton got it right in Federalist No. 74.
46% : In the words of the conservative journal National Review, he "handed out improper pardons" to a "rogues' gallery of people ... rewarded for their prominence or their usefulness to Trump rather than for any injustice done to them."Now, with the political wind at Trump's back, there is every reason to expect the cynical misuse of the clemency power to continue.
35% : At the end of his first term as president, Trump brazenly extended clemency to an array of political allies and aides who had gone to prison for crimes including political corruption, theft, fraud, and witness tampering.
35% : Would it surprise anyone if Trump, taking a page from Biden's playbook, tries to use wholesale pardons to neuter federal laws that get in his way?
30% : Clinton and Trump were unprincipled scoundrels, but other presidents had used the pardon power for honorable reasons -- to reduce national strife, to promote political reconciliation, to rectify grave injustices.
26% : Trump has long said that one of his first orders of business after regaining power will be to pardon rioters convicted of crimes committed during the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

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