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Once marijuana is legal, should people really be serving long terms for use or minor dealing? As a legal matter, legalization makes no difference. But the pardon power can provide a measure of justice and rectification.

Yet clearly part of what running the pardon process through the DOJ is for is to insulate the President from that power

Joe Arpaio, Scooter Libby, Dinesh D’Souza – the pattern is pretty clear

What clearly isn’t okay is what we’re seeing today

the real pattern is giving political allies an out from the execution of the law, political allies and people who have an iconic significance for Trump’s most loyal supporters.

This isn’t just bad governance. It’s the essence of factional rule. The faction leader – the political warlord – gets control of the state and uses it in the interest of his supporters, protecting them from the law and giving them the state’s largesse

These are in a sense norms. The President doesn’t just wake up one day and decide to pardon someone or hear from a friend who puts in a good word for someone in jail. It’s too arbitrary, too ripe for abuse, even though the constitution is 100% clear that the President does have the power to do this.

This is why you have norms. They keep you within the rails in the face of obvious temptations and questions about propriety

Rorty sympathizes with the reasons that an ascendant Leftist faction lost faith in American institutions. He is as horrified as they are by the historic treatment of indigenous people and African Americans, and by America’s behavior in the Vietnam War.

But like John Dewey, he rejects self-loathing as “a luxury which agents––either individuals or nations––cannot afford,” and finds other aspects of American history and national character to celebrate.

Today’s Left would more effectively advance social justice if its adherents possessed a historical memory that extended farther back than the 1960s, he argued, to a movement more than a century old “that has served human liberty well.” It would help, for example, “if students became as familiar with the Pullman Strike, the Great Coalfield War, and the passage of the Wagner Act as with the march from Selma, Berkeley free-speech demonstrations, and Stonewall.”

If more Leftists saw themselves as part of that history, with all its achievements, they might continue to lament that “America is not a morally pure country,” but might better understand that “no country ever has been or ever will be,” and that no country will ever have “a morally pure, homogeneous Left” to bring about social justice.

he criticizes the identity politics of the left for developing a politics “more about stigma than about money, more about deep and hidden psychosexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed,” because many of the dispossessed are thereby ignored.

Surveying academia, for example, he observes that “nobody is setting up a program in unemployed studies, homeless studies, or trailer-park studies, because the unemployed, the homeless, and residents of trailer parks are not the ‘other’ in the relative sense. To be other in this sense you must bear an ineradicable stigma, one which makes you a victim of socially accepted sadism rather than merely of economic selfishness.”

For Rorty, a Left that neglects victims of economic selfishness will not only fail; its neglect of class will trigger a terrible backlash that ultimately ill-serve the very groups that Leftist identity politics are intended to help. “The gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will very likely be wiped out,” he worried. “Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”

To avoid that future, to compete in national politics, Rorty believed that the Left would have to find a way to better address the consequences of globalization, and that it could only do so by “opening relations with the residue of the old reformist Left, and in particular with the labor unions.

What’s more, the Left “would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of talking less about stigma.” In service of that transition, he advised the Left to “put a moratorium on theory … to kick its philosophy habit” and  to “try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being Americans.”

The contemporary academic Left seems to think that the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the established order you can be. The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique…

it is almost impossible to clamber back down from their books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty, a candidate, or a political strategy.

disengagement from practical politics “produces theoretical hallucinations,” he added. “The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the most frightening of which is called ‘power.’” This obsession with power elicited scathing words:

in committing itself to what it calls “theory,” this Left has gotten something which is entirely too much like religion. For the cultural Left has come to believe that we must place our country within a theoretical frame of reference, situate it within a vast quasi-cosmological perspective.

The cultural Left often seems convinced that the nation-sate is obsolete, and that there is therefore no point in attempting to revive national politics. The trouble with this claim is that the government of our nation-state will be, for the foreseeable future, the only agent capable of making any real difference in the amount of selfishness and sadism inflicted on Americans.

This Left will have to stop thinking up ever more abstract and abusive names for “the system” and start trying to construct inspiring images of the country. Only by doing so can it begin to form alliances with people outside the academy—and, specifically, with the labor unions

Outside the academy, Americans still want to feel patriotic. They still want to feel part of a nation which can take control of its destiny and make itself a better place … Nothing would do more to resurrect the American Left than agreement on a concrete political platform, a People’s Charter, a list of specific reforms.

Instead, “the cultural Left has a preference for talking about ‘the system’ rather than specific social practices and specific changes. The rhetoric of this Left remains revolutionary rather than reformist and pragmatic.

its abandonment of the melting-pot approach to racial justice, its substitution of multiculturalism, has destroyed the solidarity needed to advance justice in any manner

The pre-Sixties reformist Left, insofar as it concerned itself with oppressed minorities, did so by proclaiming that all of us—black, white, and brown—are Americans, and that we should respect one another as such. This strategy gave rise to the “platoon” movies, which showed Americans of various ethnic backgrounds fighting and dying side by side.

the contemporary cultural Left urges that America should not be a melting-pot, because we need to respect one another in our differences. This Left wants to preserve otherness rather than to ignore it… If the Cultural left insists on continuing its present strategy––on asking us to respect one another in our differences rather than asking us to cease noting those differences––then it will have to find a new way of creating a sense of commonality at the level of national politics. For only a rhetoric of commonality can forge a winning majority in national elections.

The cultural Left has a vision of an America in which the white patriarchs have stopped voting and have left all the voting to be done by members of previously victimized groups, people who have somehow come into possession of more foresight and imagination than the selfish suburbanites.

These formerly oppressed and newly powerful people are expected to be as angelic as the straight white males were diabolical. If I shared this expectation, I too would want to live under this new dispensation. Since I see no reason to share it. I think that the Left should get back into the business of piecemeal reform within the framework of a market economy.

This was the business the American Left was in during the first two-thirds of the century.

Our national character is still in the making. Few in 1897 would have predicted the Progressive Movement, the forty-hour week, Women’s Suffrage, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the successes of second-wave feminism, or the Gay Rights Movement. Nobody in 1997 can know that America will not, in the course of the next century, witness even greater moral progress.

Justice Ginsburg, who died in September, argued six cases in the Supreme Court. In the first, Frontiero v. Richardson in 1973, she persuaded the court that the Air Force’s unequal treatment of the husbands of female officers, who were denied housing and medical benefits, violated equal protection principles.

In 1981, in Rostker v. Goldberg, the Supreme Court rejected a sex-discrimination challenge to the registration requirement, reasoning that it was justified because women could not at that time serve in combat.

In 2019, Judge Gray H. Miller, of the Federal District Court in Houston, ruled that since women can now serve in combat, the men-only registration requirement was no longer justified.

The government has not drafted anyone since the Vietnam War, and there is no reason to think that will change.

“Should the court declare the men-only registration requirement unconstitutional,” their brief said, “Congress has considerable latitude to decide how to respond. It could require everyone between the ages of 18 and 26, regardless of sex, to register; it could rescind the registration requirement entirely; or it could adopt a new approach altogether, such as replacing” the registration requirement “with a more expansive national service requirement.”

Kirby said the military still had "a lot of work to do" to become "more inclusive, more respectful of everyone — especially women."

"We pledge to do better, and we will," Kirby said. "What we absolutely won't do is take personnel advice from a talk show host, or the Chinese military. Maybe those folks feel like they have something to prove. That's on them."

"Women lead our most lethal units with character. They will dominate ANY future battlefield we're called to fight on," tweeted the Sergeant Major of the Army, Michael A. Grinston. "@TuckerCarlson's words are divisive, don't reflect our values. We have THE MOST professional, educated, agile, and strongest NCO Corps in the world."

"They are beacons of freedom and they prove Carlson wrong through determination and dedication," Funk added. "We are fortunate they serve with us."

Carlson regularly makes incendiary comments on his primetime show. He was also called out by The New York Times this week for encouraging harassment against one of its journalists. And, in the past, he has seen large-scale advertiser boycotts over comments on the Black Lives Matter movement and immigration.

Carlson's top writer quit his job last year after a CNN report revealed he had for years used a pseudonym to post racist and sexist remarks on an online forum.

"Counsel spoke to two different staff members on two separate occasions, and each time was promised a return call that never came," Swalwell's attorneys wrote on Wednesday.

Brooks spoke at the pro-Trump rally on January 6, saying, "Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass." He then asked the rally attendees if they were willing to fight.

"Plaintiff had to engage the services of a private investigator to attempt to serve Brooks personally -- a difficult feat under normal circumstances that has been complicated further in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol that Defendants incited," Swalwell's court filing continued. "Plaintiff's investigator has spent many hours over many days in April and May at locations in multiple jurisdictions attempting to locate and serve Brooks, to no avail."

"The problem here is that Mo Brooks' door is under lock and key ... There was just no access to the primary place that he was for much of the day," Andonian said. "It just takes persistence and luck sometimes. We're not claiming Brooks is hiding in a bunker somewhere. But it takes a lot of effort."

Following the Swalwell team's calls, they emailed, too. "Neither Brooks nor any member of his staff has responded to his request," their filing said.

"We want to know answers. We want to know what Donald Trump was saying, what he was thinking" or what others said to him on January 6, Andonian said on CNN Wednesday. He described the effort in the lawsuit as one way to find out what happened behind the scenes around the then-President since plans for a bipartisan congressional commission fell apart last week after Senate Republicans blocked its creation.

Following the speeches at the pro-Trump rally, many in the crowd marched to the Capitol, with several violently breaking into the building and looking for lawmakers who were certifying Biden's victory over Trump in the 2020 election.

Republican Rep. Mo Brooks is avoiding a lawsuit from his Democratic colleague Rep. Eric Swalwell that seeks to hold him accountable for the January 6 Capitol insurrection -- so much so that Swalwell's attorneys hired a private investigator to find him.

There was DNA evidence that connected McHugh to the girl, former prosecutor Todd Kuhnen told CNN. The victim was 14 years old and McHugh was 23 when the crime occurred, Kuhnen said. The victim also alleged that she was intoxicated when the incident occurred.

McHugh has been charged with eight federal crimes tied to the Capitol insurrection, including trespassing charges and the more serious counts of obstructing congressional proceedings and assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon. He hasn't yet entered a plea in court.

He has been in jail since his May 27 arrest, a federal judge in the Eastern District of California ruled Tuesday that he should be detained before trial because he poses a threat to the public. His lawyers said in a court filing Thursday that they'll try again to secure his release.

At the time of the riot, McHugh was on probation for misdemeanor convictions for driving under the influence and driving with a suspended license, according to federal court documents.

McHugh has a long rap sheet of misdemeanor convictions, including multiple DUIs and trespassing offenses, according to Negin and a CNN review of California state court records. He is one of many rioters with criminal records, and he is one of a few rioters who were on probation or parole for other unrelated crimes when they went to the Capitol on January 6.

This undercuts recent false claims from some Republicans, who have whitewashed the violent attack and claimed that the rioters were well-meaning patriotic Americans with clean records. Republicans pushed this lie at a recent House hearing about Capitol security failures. Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar complained that "the FBI is fishing through homes of veterans and citizens with no criminal records" and claimed "law-abiding citizens" were being targeted.

Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, said it's not unusual for attorneys to make these kinds of requests as a sort of "opening offer." He said there is zero chance that Chauvin will get probation, and prosecutors are also unlikely to get the 30 years they are requesting.

Chauvin was convicted in April of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for pressing his knee against Floyd's neck for about 9 1/2 minutes as the Black man said he couldn't breathe and went motionless. Floyd's death, captured on widely seen bystander video, set off demonstrations around the United States and beyond as protesters demanded changes in policing.

Even though Chauvin was found guilty of three counts, he'll only be sentenced on the most serious one — second-degree murder. Under Minnesota sentencing guidelines, with no criminal record he faces a presumptive sentence of 12 1/2 years on that count. Cahill can sentence him to as little as 10 years and eight months or as much as 15 years and stay within the guideline range.

Prosecutors said that even one of those factors would warrant the higher sentence.

"In spite of the notoriety surrounding this case, the Court must look to the facts. They all point to the single most important fact: Mr. Chauvin did not intend to cause George Floyd's death. He believed he was doing his job," he wrote.

Nelson is also seeking a new trial for Chauvin — which is a fairly routine request after a conviction. He argued extensive pretrial publicity tainted the jury pool and denied Chauvin his right to a fair trial. He also said Cahill also abused his authority when he declined defense requests to move the trial out of Minneapolis and sequester the jury.

Nelson is also asking for a hearing to investigate whether there was juror misconduct. Nelson alleged that an alternate juror who made public comments indicated she felt pressured to render a guilty verdict, and another juror who deliberated did not follow jury instructions and was not candid during jury selection. That juror, Brandon Mitchell, did not mention that he had participated in an Aug. 28 march in Washington, D.C., to honor Martin Luther King Jr.

Chauvin has also been indicted on federal charges alleging he violated Floyd's civil rights, as well as the civil rights of a 14-year-old he restrained in a 2017 arrest. The three other former officers involved in Floyd's death were also charged with federal civil rights violations; they await trial in state court on aiding and abetting counts.A federal trial date has not been set. Federal prosecutors are asking for more time to prepare for trial, saying the case is complex because of the sheer volume of evidence and the separate but coordinated state and federal investigations.

One of the court’s newest judges, Gregory Katsas, is recused, presumably because he worked on Guantánamo matters while serving as deputy White House counsel in the Trump administration. The two other Trump-appointed judges are Neomi Rao, who wrote the panel opinion, and Justin Walker, who was not yet on the court when the case was first heard. The appeals court’s longest serving judge still in active service is Karen LeCraft Henderson, appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990

“The majority reads our precedent as foreclosing any argument that substantive due process extends to Guantánamo Bay. But we have never made such a far-reaching statement about the clause’s extraterritorial application. If we had, we would not have repeatedly assumed without deciding that detainees could bring substantive due process claims.”

especially the 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush that gave the detainees a constitutional right of access to a federal court, enabling them to seek release by means of petitions for habeas corpus. In a speech to the Heritage Foundation in 2010, Judge Randolph compared the five justices in the Boumediene majority to the characters in “The Great Gatsby,” Tom and Daisy Buchanan, “careless people who smashed things up” and “let other people clean up the mess they made.”

The case in which Judge Randolph forcefully presented his argument against due process on Guantánamo, now titled Ali v. Biden, has already reached the Supreme Court in an appeal filed by the detainee, Abdul Razak Ali, in January. The justices are scheduled to consider whether to grant the petition later this month, but last week, Mr. Ali’s lawyers asked the justices to defer acting on the petition until the appeals court decides the al-Hela case. Clearly, the lawyers’ calculation is that a favorable opinion by the full United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit would put the issue in a better light.

It’s a safe bet that there are not five justices on the court today who would have joined the Boumediene majority. The only member of that majority still serving is Justice Stephen Breyer. Three of the four dissenters, all but Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016 (Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito), are still there.

Pelosi had final say over who is named as an impeachment manager and made her announcement on Wednesday, kicking of the next stage in the impeachment fight.

There are no restrictions on the number of House impeachment managers the speaker can name to serve in the role. During the impeachment trial against Trump, seven House Democrats will serve as managers.

“If a patient comes to the urgent care clinic but is in need of emergency care, they will be stabilized and transferred to an emergency department at another facility for appropriate care,” he said.

The pandemic has exacerbated the Indian Health Service’s decades-long weaknesses and has contributed to disproportionately high infections and death rates among Native Americans. The Albuquerque service area has a seven-day rolling positivity rate of about 14 percent, compared with 7 percent for New Mexico and about 8 percent nationwide.

The office in the Albuquerque area is one of I.H.S.’s 12 service regions and serves 20 Pueblos, two Apache bands, three Navajo chapters and two Ute tribes across four southwest states. There are five hospitals, 11 health centers and 12 field clinics serving the residents of the area.Wendy Sarracino, 57, a community health representative for the Acoma people, said that when her son broke his leg, she had to stop at two hospitals before he could receive the care he needed.

“That was kind of our lifeline,” Ms. Sarracino said of the hospital. “We didn’t have to go very far for health care. An awareness needs to be made that people do live in rural New Mexico and we need health care.”

Dr. Thomas said the agency requested an extension of the removal of the tribe’s financial shares in the hospital given the pandemic but Laguna denied that request. “We’re doing everything we can to maintain all services for the tribal communities,” he said. “We take it very seriously and want to make sure we’re there for the patients.”

It has always been difficult for I.H.S. to attract doctors and nurses to its facilities, many of which are in isolated areas. In the Albuquerque area, the overall job vacancy rate of the health system is 25 percent for doctors and 38 percent for nurses.

“There’s already so much loss that we have to deal with in term of the unavailability of goods and services because we live on the reservation,” she said, “so basically we are fighting to keep whatever we can because at this point the health of our community isn’t great enough to sustain itself on it own.”

Mr Burns retired from the US Foreign Service in 2014 after a 33-year career at the state department, serving under both Republican and Democratic presidents. He holds the highest rank in the Foreign Service, career ambassador.

Still, a wide swath of congressional Republicans are siding with the President and plan to object to Biden's win during Electoral College counting on Wednesday -- even though their efforts will only delay the inevitable affirmation of Biden's win.

The shakeup put officials inside the Pentagon on edge and fueled a growing sense of alarm among military and civilian officials.

Cohen, a Republican who served as Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton, told CNN's Ana Cabrera on "Newsroom" shortly after the letter was published that the "highly unusual" step was warranted given the "unconstitutional path" Trump has taken the country.

"It was really our attempt to call out to the American people. We believe all of them are patriotic. They've been led down a path by President Trump, which is an unconstitutional path. And so we felt it was incumbent on us as having served in the Defense Department to say: Please all of you in the Defense Department, you've taken an oath to serve this country, this Constitution, not any given individual," he said.

"This final action is in keeping with the highest traditions and professionalism of the U.S. armed forces, and the history of democratic transition in our great country."

Of course, such a move in the United States would immediately run afoul of long-established laws stemming from Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which set up the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) to adjudicate race-based hiring, firing and promotional grievances. Seminal cases such as Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green (1973) and Hazelwood School District v. United States (1977), among many others, served to advance the legal structure through which American companies now deal with matters of race and equity in the workplace

Over time, these lawsuits gave EEO policies more teeth by defining a legal framework for ensuring workplace protections. They also forced companies to rewrite or get rid of unfair employment policies and practices.

However, the cruel irony of America's efforts to curb workplace discrimination is that once Title VII forcibly removed race from the hiring equation, it immediately became that much harder to enact programs to address systemic racism in ways that might be beneficial, which is why our country's long attempts at promoting affirmative action programs ultimately failed.

No matter how we got here, the current system is clearly not working; White males still account for the majority of executive positions. Among the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, only 1% are Black.

America has a diversity problem, and our largest corporations need to embrace bold new models about how to accelerate social and racial justice within their ranks.

CEOs should start by stripping down America's foundational myth of meritocracy -- the notion that one's ability to get ahead in life is solely a function of the combined strength of their efforts and abilities -- and approach corporate recruiting from a new angle.

Several corporate programs, such as Starbucks' College Achievement Plan, have taken steps to make higher education more accessible for employees, but fall short of addressing the social, environmental and economic vectors that impinge upon disadvantaged youths.

What if growing up in a low-income, single-parent household, instead of being seen as an impediment to climbing the social ladder, positioned high-potential young teens for corporate-sponsored talent development programs that would support them from junior high, through high school and college and into the sponsor's corporate ranks? Such a program executed at scale would invariably lift up disadvantaged White youths as well, but that would be a feature, not a bug, making the entire initiative less controversial.

Despite the controversy around the decision, the Trajanos are not wavering. "We want to see more Black Brazilians in positions of leadership in Magalu; this diversity will make us a better company, capable of delivering a better return to our shareholders," Frederico Trajano wrote in a recent article.

"Today the racial make-up of Brazil is over 50% Black and Brown -- it basically looks like what the United States is projected to look like by 2050," observed Frederico Trajano in a recent Zoom interview with me. "American CEOs of large companies would be well-served by looking at what we are doing down here in Brazil on many fronts, including how to ensure that a company's leadership team better reflects the public it serves."

Here in the United States, Americans just elected the first woman of color, Kamala Harris, herself the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, as vice president

American CEOs should look south, and take their cues on racial justice from a bold businesswoman and her son from Brazil.

It marked a major victory in the eyes of human rights advocates in the country who have been fighting to hold American service members accountable for violence against Filipina women — which they see as a byproduct of the U.S. military’s 120-year presence

With the Pemberton conviction, it seemed that justice was finally moving in the right direction.

But on Sept. 13, Pemberton was put aboard a U.S. military cargo plane and flown out of the Philippines, a free man. A week earlier, President Rodrigo Duterte made the bombshell announcement that he had granted Pemberton an absolute pardon, nullifying the Marine’s sentence after less than six years served.

After the guilty verdict was announced, the judge ordered Pemberton to start serving his sentence at New Bilibid Prison, the largest detention facility in the Philippines, where more than 26,000 convicted men sleep in crowded cell blocks, disease festers and temperatures can reach over 100 degrees in the summer. But that detention order was revised just hours later

the presidential pardon came just hours after Duterte’s own administration filed a motion to block a court order that would have freed the Marine on other grounds.

the recent developments have seen the case deteriorate into an apparent tool for political leverage rather than justice

“This should give us a lesson that the U.S. has no respect for our sovereignty,” Virginia Lacsa Suarez, the attorney for the Laude family, told The New York Times in response to the court order to release Pemberton that was issued even before the pardon. “It shows that the U.S. looks down on us, that the U.S. does not even respect our laws.

From the beginning, the United States maintained an influence over the Pemberton case, despite the Philippines’ jurisdiction over crimes committed by U.S. service members. In 2014, Pemberton was first questioned by the United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service instead of Philippine police, and he was initially held onboard his ship, the U.S.S. Peleliu, anchored in Subic Bay, and then under U.S. guard at a Philippine military base, instead of in a Philippine jail. After he was arrested, the Marine Corps hired an attorney to represent him and paid all his legal fees, which had exceeded $550,000 by this fall

The pardon is the final chapter of a polarizing, high-profile case that has cost the U.S. Marine Corps more than half a million dollars and provoked debate over decades-old defense treaties between the two countries.

The agreement grants the United States considerable privileges toward determining where convicted American personnel will be detained, and Pemberton remained in a private air-conditioned cell fashioned from a shipping container at Camp Aguinaldo, a Philippine military base where he was monitored by two guards from the Philippine Bureau of Corrections and a steady rotation of U.S. service members. Pemberton’s rank remained unchanged and he continued receiving his monthly salary of about $2,300, totaling more than $160,000 since the killing.

brought back bitter memories for Filipinos of another case in which a U.S. Marine was accused of rape. In 2006, Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith received a 40-year prison sentence for raping Suzette Nicolas

Smith was held briefly in a Philippine jail, but after the United States canceled a joint military exercise in the Philippines, he was handed over to the U.S. Embassy. Smith remained at the embassy for more than two years, until Nicolas unexpectedly recanted her accusation and Smith was acquitted and returned home.

“In both cases, there are many forces trying to undermine the testimonies of the victims, or the witnesses or their families,

From the get-go, it was fishy,

Garcia-Flores had submitted a motion under the Philippines’ Good Conduct Time Allowance law, and Judge Roline Ginez-Jabalde, the same official who convicted Pemberton in 2015, ruled that the Marine was free to go, on the grounds that he had already served almost six years and had earned four years off his sentence for good behavior while in custody.

“A crime happened, and Pemberton paid for it under the Philippine law without any special privileges,” Garcia-Flores says. “If people think that he’s being given some special treatment, they are wrong.”

Suarez immediately moved to oppose Pemberton’s release, and so did the Department of Justice, arguing that only the Bureau of Corrections, not the Philippine courts, had the authority to determine whether Pemberton deserved time off his sentence for good conduct

Duterte met with Secretary of Justice Menardo Guevarra to discuss his constitutional right to grant an absolute pardon. At 4:51 p.m. the same day, Duterte’s secretary of foreign affairs, Teodoro Locsin Jr., announced the pardon in a tweet. “If there is a time when you are called upon to be fair, be fair,” Dutuerte said later in a televised address.

The news drew protests as the president’s critics took to social media and the streets, organizing demonstrations in Manila to voice their anger at Duterte’s decision. Many members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community thought the president was sending a signal that the Philippine government doesn’t believe that the lives of transgender women are important.

Beyond the question of whether the pardon was an anti-trans reaction by Duterte, it may have also been a strategic move to gain an advantage in relations with the United States

In February, Duterte gave notice that he was terminating the Visiting Forces Agreement, a move that many interpreted as a response to the U.S. State Department revoking the visa of Senator Ronald dela Rosa, the former National Police chief widely regarded as the architect of the administration’s notoriously violent war on drugs. Then in June, Duterte confirmed that he wouldn’t be canceling the agreement for at least another six months, and in July, dela Rosa announced that the United States would be reinstating his visa.

Despite Duterte’s outwardly critical stance toward the United States, relations between the two countries remain strong.

It’s the latest in more than $1.5 billion in arms that Duterte’s administration has moved to purchase from the United States this year, despite calls from Human Rights Watch for Congress to block the sales, citing the Philippine armed forces’ lengthy history of military and human rights abuses

Duterte was always likely to take a pragmatic approach to Pemberton’s release. “He’s willing to engage with us, but it’s not his first preference in most situations,” Schaus says. “But when an opportunity presents itself to advance his priorities in a way that is palatable to him, he’s willing to entertain it

necessary precautions in countries where the United States wants to maintain a strategic presence — including the Philippines, a key player in responding to China’s rising power in the western Pacific.

The Visiting Forces Agreement ensures that the two countries have a predetermined process to be followed if a service member is arrested and charged with a crime, when tensions are likely to be high.

Upon leaving the Philippines on Sunday, Pemberton was brought to Camp Smith in Hawaii. “The Marine Corps is taking appropriate administrative action,” Perrine said. He was unable to indicate whether Pemberton will be demoted, or if he will be given a less-than-honorable discharge.

But the appointments of Mr. Richmond, Ms. O’Malley Dillon and Mr. Ricchetti — all loyal lieutenants to Mr. Biden — suggest the importance that he is also placing on surrounding himself with people whose advice he implicitly trusts.

Ms. O’Malley Dillon, a veteran of former President Barack Obama’s campaigns, has been credited with steering Mr. Biden’s presidential bid through the difficulties of the coronavirus pandemic and the challenge of running against an unpredictable rival like Mr. Trump. Her appointment was reported earlier by NBC News.

She assumed the role of campaign manager in mid-March, just as the severity of the coronavirus outbreak was becoming clear to many Americans. Two days after she was named to the role, Biden campaign offices around the country shut down

He still has to assemble a communications team, including a press secretary, who will often serve as the public face of the administration. Among the possible candidates for that job is Symone Sanders, who has served as one of his top communications advisers during the campaign.

The president-elect will also have to choose a White House counsel, a key job in an era of divided government, when members of the other party often engage in legal clashes with the president. Dana Remus, who worked in the counsel’s office during Mr. Obama’s tenure, was the chief lawyer for Mr. Biden’s campaign.

one frequently offered explanation is having a desire to serve in the military, but being excluded from doing so.

part of the Oath Keepers’ attraction to disabled veterans like himself is that it offers a way to serve beyond their time in the military, in the absence of other “boots on the ground fraternal organizations” that might provide outlets to carry out a drive to be “guardians and warriors.”

The protests, known as the candlelight movement, led to her being impeached as well as indicted for such offences as extorting bribes from conglomerates and pressing a university into admitting a close friend’s daughter.

he promised to honour the spirit of the movement and break with the old ways of the political establishment, including abandoning the custom of pardoning former presidents who had been convicted of corruption.

Ms Park’s deteriorating health and the approaching end of his term seem to have prompted Mr Moon to change his mind

His office said he hoped the decision would heal political divisions and help usher in an era of national unity, and asked those who opposed the pardon for their understanding, given Ms Park’s ailments.

Left-wing newspaper editorials and spokes people for organisations that led the protests against Ms Park accused him of betraying the candlelight movement.

His party, which was apparently not privy to the decision before it was announced, issued a terse statement noting that pardons were the president’s prerogative.

The conservative opposition welcomed the pardon. But it complained that Mr Moon had also released Lee Seok-ki, a pro-North Korean firebrand who was serving time for treason, and restored the civic rights of Han Myeong-sook, a former left-wing prime minister who served a two-year sentence for bribery from 2015 to 2017.

the political benefits for the outgoing president and his camp may well end up outweighing the costs of pardoning Ms Park.

Reports of the disgraced former president’s ill health are credible; she is likely to remain in hospital for several weeks before being sent home.

Had she died a prisoner on Mr Moon’s watch just a few weeks before the presidential election, the resulting outrage might well have tipped the scales against his party’s candidate.

Lee Myung-bak, Ms Park’s predecessor, is in prison serving a long sentence for graft. Roh Moo-hyun, who preceded him, committed suicide shortly after leaving office, during a corruption probe into close aides and family members.

On April 1, 1814 Talleyrand convinced the French Senate to create a provisional government in Paris, with him as president. The next day, he led the French Senate in official deposing Napoleon as Emperor and forcing him into exile the island of Elba. On April 11, 1814, the French Senate, in approving the Treaty of Fontainebleau adopted a new constitution that returned power to the Bourbon monarchy.

Representing the aggressor nation, Talleyrand faced a daunting task in negotiating the Treaty of Paris. However, his diplomatic skills were credited for securing terms that were extremely lenient to France. When the peace talks began, only Austria, the United Kingdom, Prussia, and Russia were to be allowed to have decision-making power. France and the smaller European countries were to be allowed only to attend the meetings. However, Talleyrand succeeded in convincing the four powers to allow France and Spain to attend the backroom decision-making meetings. Now a hero to the smaller countries, Talleyrand proceeded to secure agreements under which France was allowed to maintain its pre-war 1792 boundaries without paying further reparations. Not only did he succeed in ensuring that France would not be partitioned by the victorious countries, he greatly enhanced his own image and standing in the French monarchy.

Though Napoleon was ultimately defeated in the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815, Talleyrand’s diplomatic reputation had suffered in the process. Bowing to the wishes of his quickly expanding group of political enemies, he resigned in September 1815. For the next 15 years, Talleyrand publicly portrayed himself as an “elder statesman,” while continuing to criticize and scheme against King Charles X from the shadows.

Upon learning of Napoleon’s death in 1821, Talleyrand cynically commented, “It is not an event, it is a piece of news.”

Talleyrand may be the epitome of a walking contradiction. Clearly morally corrupt, he commonly used deceit as a tactic, demanded bribes from persons with whom he was negotiating, and openly lived with mistresses and courtesans for decades. Politically, many regard him as a traitor because of his support for multiple regimes and leaders, some of which were hostile toward each other. On the other hand, as philosopher Simone Weil contends, some criticism of Talleyrand’s loyalty may be overstated, as while he not only served every regime that ruled France, he also served the “France behind every regime.”

“I am more afraid of an army of one hundred sheep led by a lion than an army of one hundred lions led by a sheep.”

And perhaps most self-revealing: “Man was given speech to disguise his thoughts.”