{"id":5302,"date":"2017-08-26T11:21:44","date_gmt":"2017-08-26T11:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/08\/26\/trump-pardons-joe-arpaio\/"},"modified":"2017-08-26T11:21:44","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T11:21:44","slug":"trump-pardons-joe-arpaio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/08\/26\/trump-pardons-joe-arpaio\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Pardons Joe Arpaio"},"content":{"rendered":"

And conservatives cheer. Of course. Paul Mirengoff gets it right<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Arpaio was accused by the Obama Justice Department and other left-wingers of targeting Hispanics. Indeed, the legal case that led to his conviction arose from claims of racial profiling. But in Maricopa County, the illegal immigrant population is overwhelmingly Hispanic. Had the County been plagued by mass illegal immigration by Koreans, chances are Sheriff Joe would have targeted Asians. And he would have been right to do so. Sheriffs shouldn\u2019t be expected to check their common sense at the door.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be sure, the pardon of Arpaio is, at least in part, a political act by a president who campaigned on a tough-as-nails immigration policy and who received Arpaio\u2019s backing. But there\u2019s a pretty good argument that the prosecution of Arpaio was also political.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was the highly politicized, left-wing Obama Justice Department that chose to prosecute Arpaio in connection with the hot button political issue of enforcing immigration laws. The judge whose order Arpaio defied apparently was satisfied<\/a> with civil contempt. Team Obama went criminal on the octogenarian sheriff. And it did so, according to Arpaio\u2019s lawyers, just two weeks before he stood for reelection.<\/span><\/p>\n

The pardon thus can be said to represent a political end to a political case.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some may defend the pardon by comparing it to egregious pardons of the past, like President Clinton\u2019s pardon of wealthy fugitive Marc Rich<\/a> and President Obama\u2019s pardon of a Puerto Rican terrorist<\/a>. Arguing form [from] these outliers strikes me as misguided. Their pardons were so flagrantly unjust that the same argument could be used to defend a great many indefensible pardons.<\/span><\/p>\n

No such argument is required to defend Trump\u2019s pardon of Arpaio. It was a reasonable exercise of the pardon power.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Clinton and Obama used the pardon power destructively, pardoning scumbags. Trump used it constructively, pardoning one who upheld the rule of law.<\/span><\/p>\n

You say Arpaio is a racist? Do you understand that illegal aliens do not constitute a race?<\/span><\/p>\n

But there is no point in addressing liberals with rational arguments. They don't inhabit the plane of reason. They will ignore your arguments and go right back to calling you a racist. They have found that that works, and they are out to win by any means.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And conservatives cheer. Of course. Paul Mirengoff gets it right: Arpaio was accused by the Obama Justice Department and other left-wingers of targeting Hispanics. Indeed, the legal case that led to his conviction arose from claims of racial profiling. But in Maricopa County, the illegal immigrant population is overwhelmingly Hispanic. Had the County been plagued … Continue reading “Trump Pardons Joe Arpaio”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona","category-immigration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}