paul vallas, juan rangel, and george cardenas is an unholy trinity of bad faith political actors

which is why every time you socialize instead of giving in to scrolling alone on your couch you are helping defeat the republican project of making everyone as lonely and afraid of everything as they are. defeat fascism, have a coffee date with a friend

Her other one was good too, and devon booker’s (whose I’d guess she helped design, at least bc they both have work by the same artist and were dating at the time)

Respect where its due

(among others)

Not sure how NGOs (that are not beholden to the will of the people, easily bought/manufactured by the rich, and can have divergent political aims from/definitions of that of some generalized form of “justice”) or some unelected body are best positioned to accomplish any of those, absent maybe (3)

Like the ideal use cases for a pardon, at least as I see it, are (1) for past “crimes” that are no longer viewed as such (eg, drug possession), (2) gross miscarriages of justice, and (3) when doing so is in the best interests of the nation as a whole (e.g., grunts fighting for the confederacy)

Well a pardon necessarily means that you aren’t completely “relying on your justice system”, which is kind of my point

I don’t see a valid reason for it to exist, outside of broad public approval for something (as indicated, at least ideally, by the will of the legislature)

Well ya, just like you can’t be optimistic that a pardon power granted in any particular way can’t be used corruptly

Its just a question of more tolerable downsides, and I feel reducing the likelihood of the bad thing occurring in the first place is worse than increasing the likelihood of remedy

You trust NGOs much more than I do

I don’t see why a pardon power must be necessary, and, if necessary, why it isn’t better suited to be in the purview of the legislature

Or we just… don’t pardon people, and make the initial judicial process + appeals more broadly accessible and dramatically increase the number of public attorneys

Any “necessity” of pardons is something that can be highly mitigated by throwing money at the problem, we just don’t want to do it