David McElroy

Barack Obama pardoned a couple of turkeys named Liberty and Peace this morning, sparing them from becoming Thanksgiving dinner for someone on Thursday. This lighthearted tradition is good holiday PR, but it must ring hollow with the human beings in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.

Some presidents have used pardons in questionable ways, such as the flurry of 140 pardons granted by Bill Clinton on his last day in office. In Clinton’s case, many of the people involved had personal or political connections to Clinton or other Democrats. That’s still not as many as the 204 people who Richard Nixon pardoned in one day near the end of his checkered time in office. (And remember that Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon for his Watergate-related crimes even before Nixon was charged.) More recently, George W. Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence was controversial because Libby was an administration official convicted of leaking information for political purposes.

The evidence is clear that presidents don’t mind using pardons to help their friends and politically connected associates, so why aren’t they willing to use the power to help people in this country who are in prison despite the fact that it’s clear they’re innocent?

If you don’t believe we have a problem with wrongfully convicted people, you’re wrong. That’s not an opinion. It’s a fact. We have example after example of people who have spent years in prison despite not having been guilty of the crimes they were convicted of. If you’d like details, you’ll find plenty of harrowing examples at the website of the Innocence Project, which works to help release people who are demonstrably innocent.

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Joe Paterno has been a living legend in college football for as long as I can remember. I’ve had respect for Penn State’s program for years because of him. Even when Penn State played my school, the University of Alabama, it was always hard to dislike the guy, simply because of what he stood for.

Now that legacy is in ruins. Paterno has been fired by the school where he’s still larger than life. The image he spent a lifetime building has been tarnished beyond repair. And now we have word that he’s dealing with lung cancer. It’s not the way you want to see a man of his caliber exit the public stage.

On this week’s episode of the public radio show, “This American Life,” the entire hour was devoted to what’s going on at Penn State — not the scandal itself, but the reactions of the university community and alumni. (If you’re one of the few who doesn’t know what’s gone on, you can get the background here.)

Paterno was a coach who preached the value of “doing things the right way.” He seemed to care about academics and honesty and integrity. It’s what he built his career on. In a very real sense, it was his reputation for integrity that the school has built its own image upon for close to 50 years. He was seen as a beloved god in State College, Penn., and it’s been difficult for students, fans and alumni to wrap their heads around the fact that he’s a god who failed to live up to his sterling reputation.

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The congressional “super committee” is a super failure. The only question I have is why anyone ever thought it had a chance of success.

This super committee was set up as a result of the congressional budget deal in August. Formally, it’s called the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, but everybody just calls it the super committee. Its job was to do what Congress was supposed to have done during the fight a few months ago — figure out how to reduce the federal budget deficit that’s threatening to grow bigger and bigger and bigger.

Democrats on the committee want tax increases and few spending cuts. Republicans want no tax increases and slightly more serious spending cuts. The two sides have positions that are locked in concrete. They aren’t budging. Monday, the members announced that they’re giving up, because no deal is possible.

If you read various stories about why the negotiations failed, you almost have to come to the conclusion that the two sides might as well be on different planets insofar as how they view the world. Democrats view high-income taxpayers as cows to be milked. Republicans want to keep milking those cows, but just not as hard. The narrative that’s probably going to prevail in the media is the one that says Republican insistence on extending the Bush-era tax cuts is to blame for the failure. I think the truth is simpler and less exciting to TV news.

This country isn’t united in what it wants. It’s not even close. Maybe it never has been. But the fissures are getting deeper. The unity that exists in history books and government classes and romantic imaginations is gone. We have less and less in common. There’s nothing united about today’s United States.

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