Bush Pardons Bald Eagle Killers

Grass-Roots Effort Paves Path to a Pardon

By JIM RUTENBERG

Published: November 29, 2008

For Leslie O. Collier, the operator of a 600-acre grain farm, it was not so much the felony conviction for killing two bald eagles that stung the most, and that stung plenty. It was the loss of his hunting rifles that went with it.

For his mother, June S. Collier, it was the pain of seeing her son’s name sullied in their town of roughly 5,000 people in southeastern Missouri, where the family had lived, farmed and hunted for four generations.

And for Lanie Black, a former Missouri state representative and a close family friend, it was the perceived injustice of the felony branding that prompted him to help Mr. Collier and his mother as they began, roughly a decade ago, to seek the ultimate redemption: a presidential pardon.

The effort proved successful last week, when Mr. Collier, 50, became one of 14 people to receive pardons from President Bush, one of the stingiest granters of them in modern history.

The presidential pardon — providing absolution to felons, often in the final days of a presidency — is as American a tradition as Thanksgiving. The framers of the Constitution established presidential pardon power to help a president spread goodwill, particularly at crucial moments after insurrection or rebellion.

Public attention has usually focused on the more celebrated or disputed cases, like George Washington’s pardons for the participants of the armed Whiskey Rebellion against high liquor taxes in 1795; Gerald R. Ford’s preemptive pardon of Richard M. Nixon in 1974; and Bill Clinton’s pardon in 2001 of the fugitive financier Marc Rich, whose former wife was a major contributor to his presidential library.

Public speculation on the expected next round of pardons from Mr. Bush has mostly focused on Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., and other administration officials involved in challenged policies like the domestic wiretapping program, or former Representative Randy Cunningham of California, who was convicted of fraud.

But in recent history, the list of those who have received pardons has been dominated less by convicts with connections to the upper echelons of American power than by people of modest means in the heartland — an odometer cheat from Mississippi; a bootlegger from Tennessee; Mr. Collier — whose relatively minor crimes ultimately led them to be labeled felons.

For most of them, it is a leap of faith to file an application with the pardon attorney’s office at the Justice Department, which culls through thousands of requests before making recommendations to the president that he is under no obligation to follow.

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It's illegal to kill bald eagles because they are endangered. Bald eagles are also the national symbol. Bush pardons bald eagle killer.

Nuff said.

Related...

• NY Times Urges Bush Not To "Abuse Pardons"; Bill Kristol Urges Bush To Pardon Torturers And Wiretappers

“I really tried to never do anything I don't believe in, so I don't want to change it now. I really don't,”- Paul Wellstone