A Quote by John Densmore
President Obama should pardon Leonard Peltier, or at least commute his sentence, not just for humanitarian reasons, but also as a way of acknowledging the injustice suffered by Native Americans.
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Many years ago, I spent 5k at a fundraiser to hang with another lame duck: Bill Clinton. I lobbied him to pardon Leonard Peltier, the Nelson Mandela of Native Americans.
In one of his final acts in office, President Obama shortened the sentences of 209 prisoners, pardoned 64 individuals .The list included Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, longtime imprisoned Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar López Rivera and retired U.S. Marine Corps General James Cartwright. But missing from the list is 71-year-old Native American activist Leonard Peltier.
President Barack Obama, to his credit, has given - issued personal pardons in deserving cases. But he should go far beyond. He should proceed to what is in fact an urgent necessity: to grant a general pardon to 11 million people who are living and working here, productive citizens in all but name, threatened with deportation by the incoming Donald Trump administration. This would be a horrible humanitarian tragedy, a moral outrage.
Some of the reasons John McCain lost in 2008 were his lackluster campaign, his refusal to showcase Obama's extreme liberalism and, thus, his failure to demonstrate why he would make a better president than Obama.
Yes, Obama took over two wars from Bush - just as President Richard Nixon inherited Vietnam from President Lyndon Johnson and President Dwight Eisenhower inherited Korea from President Harry Truman. But at least the war in Iraq was all but won by 2009, thanks largely to the very surge Obama had opposed as a senator.
When I was a kid, I really loved Indians. Native Americans. Pardon. Me.
I have been guilty of watching Westerns without acknowledging that Native Americans have gone through the same madness as African Americans. Isn't it extraordinary that sometimes the most offended have not seen others being offended?
Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention - the defining injustice of Guantanamo - as his own policy.
I have been very encouraged by President Obama's call to action on climate change both at his Inauguration and in the State of the Union Address. This is a global imperative. I also welcome President Obama's intention to pursue reductions in nuclear arsenals.
I don't want to compare President Obama and President Trump on these issues, because they're different, and the scale isn't even remotely the same. But President Obama said things that weren't true and got away with it more for a variety of reasons, and one is the media was much more supportive of him.
The turkey that President Obama will pardon this Thanksgiving is from California. The turkey said, "I don't need a pardon. I need a job.'
We also have a piece about the Mayflower, but it's just a very different, very gritty, very character-driven version of why those people were on that boat and what the experience was like for them, emotionally, physically and spiritually, and also the Native Americans and what the state of Native American society was at that time.
President Clinton and President Obama played a round of golf over the weekend. President Clinton asked Obama what his handicap was, and Obama said, 'Joe Biden.'
Puerto Ricans are Americans. We've been American citizens since 1917. We fought the same battles, made the same sacrifices. We've lost our land in the same way that Native Americans lost their land, and we've been the subject of discrimination and racism in the same way that African Americans have. We've suffered the full spectrum of oppression, and yet we've been off the map 4,000 miles away so we haven't even been able to argue our case.
They think my father has a lack of concern for human rights, but regardless of details, the Americans should be humanitarian in dealing with his family, because we are human. Saddam has three young ladies and they have children, I have five, Rana has four, and Hala has two. Therefore, our father is very dear to us. His grandchildren love him a lot. Why aren't humanitarian factors taken into account?
I can't deny that it will be a historic event for an African-American to become president. And should that happen, all Americans should be proud - not just African-Americans, but all Americans - that we have reached this point in our national history where such a thing could happen. It will also not only electrify our country, I think it'll electrify the world.
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