"So much hogwash has been written about the President’s pardon power that it’s hard to know where to start. One place, though, would be the New York Times’ editorial on President Trump’s use of pardons in military cases. It ran last week under a headline suggesting Mr. Trump’s general approach to pardons “may be lawful, but it is in no way normal.” In other words — blam! — before the Times even gets down to business it runs off the rails.
"That’s because there is no “normal” way to pardon. If the Framers had wanted to specify norms for using the pardon, they were perfectly capable of doing so. They did that for, say, treason. . . ."
. . . " The American Civil Liberties Union is quoted as saying that the pardon represented “a presidential endorsement of murder.” That’s no more true than is the idea that the ACLU’s famous defense of the brownshirts who marched in Skokie was an endorsement of the Nazis. It turns out that there are doubts about the court-martial of Mr. Behenna. The ex-GI argued that he feared the prisoner was going for his gun; Mr. Trump may simply believe him — or nurse doubts." . . .
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