He's so vain: What's the deal with those presidential pardons?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you may have heard, President Bush yesterday issued 14 pardons and commuted 2 sentences. This is what presidents do near the end of their terms, and, of course, Bush is no exception.

According to the Times, there are "2,000 pending petitions," but there were no big names among the 16. Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence last year, while others, like disgraced junk bond king Michael Milken, disgraced ex-Congressman Randy Cunningham, disgraced track athlete Marion Jones, and the disgraceful Conrad Black, haven't (yet) been granted clemency.

"Those issued reprieves had been found guilty of mostly garden-variety offenses," including "income tax evasion, unauthorized acquisition of food stamps, drug offenses and bank embezzlement." Thankfully, Bush did not "issue blanket pardons to government officials and intelligence officers who took part in counterterrorism programs like Qaeda interrogations, to protect them from the threat of criminal prosecution." (But, of course, there is still time for Bush to do what he does best, which is the wrong thing.)

So... nothing special. But this stood out:

The closest any of the defendants came to celebrity was John E. Forté, a hip-hop artist and backup singer to Carly Simon who was convicted of aiding and abetting in the distribution of cocaine. (Ms. Simon put up the bail of $250,000 for Mr. Forté when he was arrested in 2001 at Newark International Airport.) Mr. Forté was sentenced to 14 years in prison, but Mr. Bush commuted the remainder of his sentence.

Okay, but why him? What is Bush's connection to such a relative unknown? Is he just a big Carly Simon fan, or what? It doesn't seem like Bush to make nice with hip-hop artists for nothing.

I'm not insinuating anything here -- Bush connected to Newark drug network!

I'm just curious.