Obama pardons nine people

President Barack Obama has granted the first pardons of his presidency, to nine people convicted of crimes including possessing drugs, counterfeiting and even mutilating coins.

No one well-known was on the list, and some of the crimes dated back decades or had drawn little more than a slap on the wrist in the first place — such as the Pennsylvania man sentenced in 1963 to probation and a $20 fine for mutilating coins. The mutilation of coins occurred when a young Marine made dimes out of pennies, cutting the lip off, to use the coins in vending machines.

The White House declined to give details on the cases or comment on why these particular people were selected by a president who previously had only pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys.

One of those pardoned, Ronald Lee Foster of Beaver Falls, Pa., was sentenced in 1963 to a year of probation and made to pay a small fine for mutilating coins.

"Well, we were only making only $82 a month. We were using them in the washing machines, the dryers, the cigarette machines and the pop machines on the base in our barracks," he said. He was given a year's probation and made to pay a small fine.

Foster, now 66, said he wasn't aware that he even had a felony conviction on his record until he applied for a gun permit in Pennsylvania five years ago and was denied. After getting out of the Marines in 1966, Foster returned to Pennsylvania and spent 27 years as a supervisor at a ceiling plant and also served on the local zoning board. He also spent 35 years as a volunteer firefighter.

He was told about the pardon earlier Friday by his lawyer, who applied for it on his behalf about 18 months ago.

Presidential pardons often come in the holiday season toward year's-end, but they can sometimes be extremely controversial, such as when Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich at the end of his presidency.

President George W. Bush drew heat for commuting the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, in the case of the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. But Bush rejected Cheney's vigorous urging that he later pardon Libby as well.

"The president was moved by the strength of the applicants' post-conviction efforts at atonement, as well as their superior citizenship and individual achievements in the years since their convictions," said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin. The White House announced the pardons Friday as Obama was in the air on the way home from a surprise visit to Afghanistan.

Obama has received 551 pardon petitions in the course of his presidency, of which he's denied 131, according to the Justice Department. Another 265 petitions were closed without presidential action.

commentary on Ms. Hausmann's post

In her latest post, Ms. Hausmann dissected the ongoing gun-control problems that have plagued our country and other parts of the world, making points on the founding fathers and how we have interpreted the amendment stating that we have the “right to bear arms”, which she describes as being a part of “America’s Backbone”.  Although most of Hausmann’s post was unbiased, it did seem that she was in favor of guns being available to the public after the appropriate measures are taken, as opposed to guns being controlled by the government. Towards the end of her argument, she states that “The amendments were created to give us permanent rights and freedoms, and now people want to take them away?” As I said before, Hausmann is somewhat biased towards guns being available to the public, but she also raises an excellent point; in any other instance, we would just love to say that our constitution is the absolute source of authority in the country. However, when the government feels that something doesn’t need to be brought before the eyes of the constitution, it will stay obscure, as the gun-control problem has. Hausmann brings up another strong argument (in my opinion) for guns to be available to the public; although guns are indeed dangerous, guns themselves don’t kill people, people kill people. Hausmann also argues that making guns inaccessible to the public will only cause more deaths than before; without other means to defend against criminals and muggers, innocents will be unable to protect themselves.

I think that although her post included some biased views on gun-control, it also made a strong case for her views with facts, showing that Ms. Hausmann can defend her views with facts instead of personal experiences or supposed facts.