Notable press stories noting Obama's lack of clemency action

It is sad, annoying and telling that the mainstream American press is now talking about President Obama's failure to pardon the long dead boxer Jack Johnson (see here and here), rather than about his failure to grant a single clemency to a live person more than nine months into his Term.  P.S. Ruckman has this definitive post on this topic, which concludes this way:

The power to forgive is not a matter of sport, and should not be the fodder of publicity hounds or the passing pet project of Hollywood elites.  The clemency power should used to address the real-life punishments and disabilities of the living.  It should not be reduced to (or confused with) a mechanism to mollify the whims of unrelated parties decades after the end of a life -- and, of course, all meaningful punishment and disability.  While it may make members of Congress feel good about themselves to pat each other on the back, after the fact, for a feigned accomplishment, our prisons continue to hold individuals who deserve freedom (or at least a chance at freedom), and our society has citizens who have long since fulfilled the requirements of justice yet continue to feel the sting of punishment.  Mr. President, they deserve your attention first.

Valuably, the media across the pond link the Jack Johnson story to the broader story of President Obama's failure to grant any clemencies to date in this article from The Sunday Times.  Here is one snippet from that piece:

The omission [in exercising the clemency power] may partly be due to a bureaucratic breakdown in the Justice Department, which is responsible for recommending presidential action in clemency cases. Legal scholars also suspect that Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, is implacably imposed to any initiative that might be criticised as softness on crime.

“Pardoning used to be considered a part of the routine housekeeping business of the presidency and hundreds of grants were made every year, without fanfare, to ordinary people,” said Margaret Colgate Love, a lawyer specialising in clemency requests.  “But the system broke down in the Clinton administration and the Justice Department’s pardon office has become a place where petitions for presidential mercy go to die.”

Some related posts on clemency:

• A simple plea for Prez Obama: grant at least a single clemency in your first 100 days
• Historical evidence that it is NOT too early to start demanding clemencies from President Obama
• Still waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting ... on the clemency front
• Another public and potent call to reinvigorate the pardon power
• When will President Obama start acting like President Lincoln when it comes to the clemency power?
• "Judge urges Obama to cut coke dealer's sentence"
• The sad (unpardonable) state of compassion in the Bush Administration
• ACS issue brief on the pardon power
• Latest FSR issue on "Learning from Libby"
• "The Fall of the Presidential Pardon"
• What might 2009 have in store for . . . executive clemency?