Go to the Washington Post today (
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8448-2005Mar4.html) and you will see that Bush has granted pardons to the strangest group of people, including an arsonist, a guy accused of bootlegging in South Carolina in 1959 and only given three years of probation, someone convicted of disposing of stolen explosives, and someone who stole government property.
Given that the Bush spin machine never does anything for no reason, and given that these pardons were dropped on a Friday afternoon so that they appeared this Saturday morning in the paper, we Kossacks might want to spend a few hours checking to see who these eight people are.
This story, which was written by the Associated Press, reminds us that Bush has granted only 39 pardons and sentence commutations since taking office. George H.W. Bush issued 77 pardons and Bill Clinton granted clemency to 456 people.
Most recent presidents have granted hundreds or even thousands of pardons and sentence commutations.
Three of the eight pardoned by the current Bush are from Texas, as you might have figured, including the bootlegger mentioned above. Another Texan was given six months in prison and five years of probation for failing to appear in court in 1982.
Here is the complete pardon list, as detailed in the AP story. Let's see if we can dig up anything interesting on them:
Those granted pardons were:
- Alan Dale Austin, Mabank, Tex., misapplication of mortgage funds, sentenced in October 1987 to two years in prison and $22,000 in restitution.
- Charles Russell Cooper, Corpus Christi, Tex., bootlegging, sentenced in May 1959 in South Carolina to three years' probation.
- Joseph Daniel Gavin, East Elmhurst, N.Y., court-martialed by the Army in 1984 for failure to obey an order and other charges and given a bad-conduct discharge.
- Raul Marin, El Paso, failure to appear, sentenced in January 1982 to six months in prison and five years' probation.
- Ernest Rudnet, Tamarac, Fla., conspiracy to file false tax returns, sentenced March 1992 to one year's probation.
- Gary L. Saltzburg, Clovis, N.M., theft of government property, sentenced in January 1995 to 18 months' probation and community service.
- David Lloyd St. Croix, Kenmare, N.D., disposing of stolen explosives, sentenced June 1989 to two years' probation and a $500 fine.
- Joseph William Warner, McLaughlin, S.D., arson on an Indian reservation, sentenced November 1995 to eight months in prison, a $5,000 fine, and restitution of $5,560.
For starters, I did Google searches on the names, which revealed the following:
- Nothing
- A guy born in 1942 who died in 1973.
- Nothing
- Two Raul Marin's in El Paso phone book, and lots of entries because these are fairly common first and last names in the Hispanic community.
- Nothing
- Possibly a photographer who took some pics of a blazing car fire in NY in 2004.
- Nothing
- Nothing
Can you provide some assistance?