James Taranto at Best of the Web Today points out:

"In August 1999 President Clinton granted executive clemency to 16 members of FALN, the Puerto Rican terror group behind some 130 bombings, including one that killed four people at New York's Fraunces Tavern in 1975."


He further notes that "even the ultraliberal New York Times looked askance" at this decision by President Clinton:

To be sure, an American President has an absolute power to pardon. But that does not relieve him of the obligation to defend any and every decision to intervene in the criminal justice system. Indeed, this President's rare use of the pardoning power makes it all the more important for him to reveal his reasoning. Of more than 3,000 applications for clemency filed since 1993, he has granted only 3. The suspicion is rampant that his motivation was a political effort to please the Puerto Rican community that is crucial to Mrs. Clinton's hopes in the coming Senate race from New York.

Taranto writes that "the House voted 311-41 for a nonbinding resolution "expressing the sense of Congress that the President should not have granted clemency to terrorists." All 41 of those voting "no" were Democrats, as were 71 of the 72 members who voted "present" (the other was a self-styled socialist who abjured formal membership in the party)."

Nancy Pelosi did not vote, but only because she showed up too late to vote as the Congressional Record reveals:

Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Chairman, on the last vote, H. Con. Res. 180, I was detained in traffic while returning to the Capitol. Had I been present, I would have voted "no."

Pelosi could not bring herself to stand opposed and was not willing to criticize the president, more than likely due to the fact he was from her own party, when he pardoned and set free terrorists who had been "convicted of such crimes as seditious conspiracy, possession of unregistered firearms and interstate transportation of a stolen vehicle." Yet Pelosi was able to put out this dribble:

The President's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people.

The President said he would hold accountable anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak [sic] case. By his action today, the President shows his word is not to be believed. He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his Administration accountable.

Taranto says, "we're just happy that a good and patriotic man won't have to go to prison as a sacrifice to the Angry Left." and asks, "By the way, what about the real "leaker" of Plame's "identity," Richard Armitage? Is he ever going to face "justice"?

HeavyHanded thinks not.