Posted by vidluther 16 hours ago
Show HN: Pardonned.com – A searchable database of US Pardons
Inspired by the videos of Liz Oyer, I wanted to be able to verify her claims and just look up all the pardons more easily.
Tech Stack: Playwright - to sccrape the DOJ website SQLite - local database Astro 6 - Build out a static website from the sqlite db
All code is open source and available on Github.
> 118 of 2,791 GRANTS
Only 118 list marijuana in the pardon text
Relegate pardon powers to only amount to commutations, at the bare minimum.
Oh fun fact, Alexander Hamilton thought monarchies were the best form of government.
The pardon system in particular needs a serious overhaul. For every case where a pardon is used to correct an "unjust ruling", it swings just as easily in the opposite direction. Frankly I have more faith in a decision that goes through the proper judicial process than in one made unilaterally by a single person with zero oversight. There's a reason it's been historically called the "royal pardon".
We need a combination of:
- hard caps on the maximum number of pardons a president can issue per term
- congressional review before those pardons take effect
I haven’t looked into each case here, but I assume these are a bunch of non-violent drug offenders serving years and decade-long sentences. I see 30 years for “possession with intent to distribute”. That’s just crazy.
When the justice system is clearly broken, it’s ok to subvert it.
The recent presidential immunity decision just made the downsides way more likely.