House Republicans all but formally announced on Tuesday that they don't think this president has the rights assigned by the Constitution to the president of the United States. Nineteen members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch demanding answers to a long list of questions about President Obama's grant of
clemency for 46 nonviolent drug offenders. According to the Republicans, these questions were posed in the interest of oversight
and because "the fact that the Department’s clemency initiative is focused solely on federal drug offenders continues this Administration’s plainly unconstitutional practice of picking and choosing which laws to enforce and which to change."
The letter even quotes then-Attorney General Eric Holder on the stringent requirements for clemency, including that, because of changes in sentencing laws, the people "likely would have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted of the same offense(s) today" and that they were nonviolent offenders with minimal criminal records who have "demonstrated good conduct in prison." But aside from the Republicans taking the position that nonviolent drug offenses should lead to long prison sentences that are no longer on the books, there's a direct insult to the Constitution here. Ian Millhiser explains:
Indeed, the president’s broad discretion to grant mercy to whoever they choose, when they choose, so long as the beneficiary of that mercy is an alleged or convicted federal offender, is part of America’s constitutional design. The Constitution itself lays this power out in broad terms, providing that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” As the Supreme Court explained in Schick v. Reed, the drafters of this constitutional provision “spoke in terms of a ‘prerogative’ of the President, which ought not be ‘fettered or embarrassed.'” Moreover, the Court added, “the power flows from the Constitution alone, not from any legislative enactments, and that it cannot be modified, abridged, or diminished by the Congress.”
Should the signatories to the House Republicans’ letter distrust the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution, perhaps they will trust the conservative Heritage Foundation. According to The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, “[t]he power to pardon is one of the least limited powers granted to the President in the Constitution,” and its scope “remains quite broad, almost plenary.”
But somehow, in the eyes of House Republicans,
this president's authority on this issue, given by the Constitution, is subject to their "oversight" and accusations of "plainly unconstitutional" behavior. This is flatly discrediting—discrediting these Republicans, not the president. They've shown that their desire to attack Obama comes well before their respect for the Constitution.