Should President Obama pardon former Governor Rod Blagojevich?

[ak]

12 years is a long stint considering rapist and hard nosed criminals get less time.

I think he should.

[Jeremy]

[wjb316]

Rod got off easy in my opinion. He's a perfect example of what's wrong with our country and why good people don't run for office and can't get very far in politics. There are too many little Rod's running around in politics that you cannot get anywhere important without owing favors or bribing a few people.

Politicians are a special kind of evil because they convince themselves that what they are doing isn't that bad. The long term repercussions of crooked politicians are massive. It shakes confidence in our system, hurts the political process that so many have died to have and to protect, it results in unconstitutional laws and in good people being screwed over.

People like Rod are lucky they get off with a few years in prison.

[Prop]

I don't know the facts of the case at all and in order to respond on him specifically I would only get the media glimpses of it so will opt out of commenting on him direct. I'm a strong fan however of holding authorities to higher levels of accountability. Unfortunately the systems is backwards. Police officers are more likely to get away with certain crimes than others - for example aggravated assault or murder. It's hard to argue as a police officer you don't stand a better chance of getting away with those crimes than you do if your profession was say a restaurant owner.

At the same time the trial does need to be fair, and not speculative. In cases where there is clear undeniable evidence of guilt, I not only do not believe in special treatment, I think people such as elected officials, military, police etc. should have stronger sentences than people of lesser authority if it was abuse of their position that made such crimes possible.

In any case I'd like myself as well as some tens of thousands of others holding felonies for petty crimes a decade ago with no further arrests all to be pardoned. We should make it a week long television episode where Obama reads all our names off the list in between taking breaks to sleep. When this action is complete, let's then discuss pardoning former elected officials. Again, not familiar much with his case, but suspect there there are a lot of more deserving of pardons than Blagojevich. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my chosen biased.

[ih82lose]

I don't know much about the whole case...but it always seamed like he was getting railroaded.

I imagine there are other politician more deserving of such a sentence...

[Jeremy]

The reality is that Blago didn't do anything that other politicians don't do on a daily basis. His dumb ass just got caught with a wire tap and now is being made an example of.

All of them need to be locked up in my opinion.