The pardon process relies on the recommendations of a special office of the White House, which takes a number of factors (not skin color) into account overtly, including things like level of remorse or financial or family factors. The process was, wisely one would have thought, depoliticized by George Bush at the beginning of his first term, so that the professional pardon lawyers’ recommendations are routinely followed, plus or minus only small variations.
So, we therefore know that the fact that a white person is 400% more likely to be pardoned than a black person is not because of some yahoo racist president or evil chief of staff. Rather, it’s just how the legal system turns out.
Propublica did the study that gives us these results. Continue reading Racial Bias in Presidential Pardons?
might come in especially handy these days, what with faster than light neutrinos, Republican candidates and other science-defying entities zooming around. And, it is one of those Japanese anime things, which makes it cool. This is a story set in Tagai Academy summer’s school session, where the “plucky” Miss Uraga teaches the kids relativity.