Notes from around the Human Experience…
THE LATEST FROM THE FIASCO FACTORY: Oh dear me, President Trump – President Trump! – is now defending his right to pardon people. He feels so strongly about the matter he tweeted about this weekend.
WHAT IN THEEE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? Why was this necessary? Has anyone disputed this? Anyone who has hasn’t read the Constitution, because it is very clear on the matter, Article II, Section 2, Paragraph 1 stating, in part:
…and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
That’s pretty clear: a president can pardon anyone for any reason, from murder to color of socks. The only stipulation is the pardon will have no effect on the impeachment of a federal official, including the president.
Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Jury: So why would a president defend a power expressly granted to him by the Constitution? Well, it could be because Trump – no dummy, though unread and still a bit childish – feels like sticking his chest out and showing how powerful he is.
More likely, however, is that Trump is laying the groundwork for pardoning himself.
Good Luck With That: We’re not Constitutional experts here at The Daily Dose, but it seems to us presidents cannot pardon themselves.
One, it is one of Justice’s fundamental tenets that a person cannot be their own judge and jury. And, two, why would the Founding Fathers have subjected the president to impeachment if he could pardon himself?
Dry, Technical Matter: The pardon power stems from the English monarch’s power to pardon their subjects. A complete review of this power is, thankfully, beyond the scope of your Daily Dose, but a monarch pardoning themselves never came up because English monarchs were above the law and it is possible the writers of our Constitution never considered the matter.
GREAT MOMENTS IN SECRETARIAL WORK: The first patent for a typewriter in the United States is issued on this date in 1829 to William Austin Burt, a Michigan surveyor. Known as a typographer, it worked on more or less the same principle as the typewriter, except characters were moved into position by moving levers.
Burt built his typographer to speed up the time the correspondence his work as a government surveyor required, but his typographer wasn’t a whole lot faster than writing it out by hand and there was no market for it and Burt sold the rights to the typographer the following year for $75.
Name Game: Typographer would be upgraded to type-writer in 1874, and would remain hyphenated until 1886.
Fix Or Repair Daily: The newly-incorporated Ford Motor Company sells its first car on this date in 1903, a Model A. The company had incorporated in June with twelve investors ponying up $28,000. Within two months Ford had sold over 200 Model A’s and by October Ford would show a profit of $37,000.
FunFact: The car had been ordered by a Chicago dentist, had a two-cylinder engine and cost $850, about $21,000 in today’s dollars.
Up, Up And Away…Or Not: Air Canada Flight 143 makes a safe, emergency landing at Gimli, Manitoba on this date in 1983. The flight from Montreal to Edmonton had run out of fuel above Red Lake, Ontario and glided 150 miles to a former Royal Canadian Air Force base.
Whoops, My Bad: The investigation into the incident showed that fuel taken on in Montreal had been logged in in pounds instead of kilograms, so the plane had less than half the fuel crew members thought it had. No one was injured, though the plane, which was virtually silent because the engines were shut down, did scare a couple of kids riding their bikes on the runway.
The Catch: Dwayne Wise of the Chicago White Sox turns in one of the great defensive plays in baseball history on this date in 2009, making a running, leaping and juggling catch of a fly ball at the wall in the ninth inning of what would turn out to be a perfect game pitched by Mark Buehrle.
Oh Yeah: The Catch came off the bat of Gabe Kapler of the Tampa Bay Rays and led off the ninth inning.
The Post Game Show Is Brought To You By Old Style Beer: It was the 18th perfect game in major league history and the second for the White Sox. Charlie Robertson had pitched the first in 1922.
Quote Book: I had found what I was looking for- a man…who had paid every price and not counted it a sacrifice; who was paying it still and would pay it till he died…who had reduced his life to the one thing that mattered to him, and was free. – John LeCarre, The Secret Pilgrim
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Of the twelve humans who have walked on the moon, six are still alive.
Today’s Stumper: Which major league baseball team has been involved in the most perfect games? – Answer next time!
Gaylon was the Colorado Libertarian Party’s nominee for the United States Senate in 2014 and the United States House of Representatives in 2016. All told, he was able to con just under 70,000 to vote for him.
