Pardon

Where the Ravens fall in the latest power rankings: ESPN.com No. 25: A day after his team lost its seventh straight game, coach Brian Billick thought it was the appropriate time to announce that he will be back next season. You'll pardon Ravens fans if they're not exactly high-fiving each other about the news. CBSSports.com No. 26: After that loss to the Patriots, they packed it in against the Colts. Maybe it's time to see whether Troy Smith can be the long-term answer, although it won't happen this week.

The nation's 38th president didn't live quite long enough to bask in the glow of the latest assessment of his presidency, Gerald R. Ford, by the historian Douglas Brinkley. Ford, who died Dec. 26, would have seen that his pardon of Richard M. Nixon has not only faded as a negative in the eyes of most Americans, but also is now judged a distinct positive. Moreover, Brinkley gives Ford high marks for restoring Americans' faith in their government as well as for several foreign and domestic successes.

The attorney for a man wrongly imprisoned for more than seven years warned yesterday that he will sue the state unless Gov. Parris N. Glendening grants a pardon and the state agrees to pay the man hundreds of thousands of dollars.The warning was issued a day after a House of Delegates committee killed a bill that would have paid Anthony Gray Jr. $7.5 million.The 31-year-old Calvert County man was jailed for 7 1/2 years in the killing of a Chesapeake Beach woman. He had been sentenced to life in prison but was released last month.

The House of Delegates rejected yesterday a plan to pay $7.5 million to a Maryland man who spent 7 1/2 years in prison for a rape and killing he did not commit.Del. Clarence Davis, an East Baltimore Democrat, introduced the measure to compensate Anthony Gray Jr., 31, a Calvert County man who was blamed for the crimes but was later cleared when it was learned that fingerprints and DNA evidence recovered at the scene did not belong to him.Members of the House Appropriations Committee said they were sympathetic to Gray's plight, but ruled that the proper forum for him to seek restitution is the Board of Public Works, a panel that oversees state spending.

WASHINGTON -- As he sat in prison six days before the 1996 presidential election, Webster Hubbell and his lawyers worked frantically to amend old tax returns that had significantly understated his income. This was part of an effort, investigators now suspect, to make him an attractive candidate for a presidential pardon."There is some chance that the day after Election Day, they will make a move that moots everything," Hubbell's lawyer, John Nields, told his client over one of the prison telephones whose calls are routinely recorded by the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Starr lied under oath about avoiding talk shows; violated rules respecting right of counsel; flouted the law of grand jury secrecy; extorted perjury by threatening prosecution. He deserves a presidential pardon.F8Explain again why Alex. Brown needed Bankers Trust.If everything that is not Microsoft merged, Microsoft woulddominate it.Americans, be thankful not to be traveling this weekend.Pub Date: 11/27/98

WASHINGTON -- Moments after President Clinton gave videotaped testimony for the criminal trial of James and Susan McDougal, his former Whitewater partners, he privately agreed to give Susan McDougal a pardon if she was convicted, a new book by James McDougal says."

MADRID, Spain -- Spain is a country with a poor environmental record. It has stripped its forests, soiled its rivers and bays and paved its coasts. The government is often reprimanded and fined for violations of European environmental rules.But a Spanish judge has done something out of the ordinary: He has sent a factory owner to prison for committing crimes against the environment. It is the first such punishment in Spain and decidedly an exceptional step in Europe.The factory owner, Jose Puignero, who owns textile plants in three towns in northeastern Spain, entered jail last week after his appeal to the Supreme Court and pleas for a pardon from many influential people failed.

MADRID, Spain -- Spain is a country with a poor environmental record. It has stripped its forests, soiled its rivers and bays and paved its coasts. The government is often reprimanded and fined for violations of European environmental rules.But a Spanish judge has done something out of the ordinary: He has sent a factory owner to prison for committing crimes against the environment. It is the first such punishment in Spain and decidedly an exceptional step in Europe.The factory owner, Jose Puignero, who owns textile plants in three towns in northeastern Spain, entered jail last week after his appeal to the Supreme Court and pleas for a pardon from many influential people failed.

HOUSTON -- Rejecting the unanimous recommendation of the state board of pardons and of the judge and prosecutors in the case, Texas Gov. George W. Bush has declined to pardon a Houston man who spent 12 years in prison for a rape that DNA testing later indicated he did not commit.The case, in which the forensic evidence points to the man's innocence but the victim continues to insist that he raped her, has sparked a highly unusual legal fracas and has even taken on political overtones.A lawyer for the convicted man has accused Bush, a potential Republican presidential aspirant, of bending to concerns over the political fallout of pardoning a convicted rapist, even one who prosecutors now say they believe is innocent of the crime.

North Korea's surprise "special pardon" of two American television journalists may have reopened the channels of communication between the Obama administration and the secretive regime that for years has defied the world with its nuclear tests and political bombast. After a whirlwind 24-hour visit that capped months of quiet diplomatic negotiations, former President Bill Clinton left Pyongyang on a private jet with the reporters today following talks with leader Kim Jong Il, according to North Korea's state news media.

Why do judges wear robes? Does their peculiar mode of dress tell us anything about the ideal character and qualities of a judge? Do the robes indicate whether "empathy" - a quality highly touted by President Barack Obama in his appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court - ought to figure in the judicial temperament? From time immemorial, the special quality of a judge has been thought to be impartiality. Lady Justice is always pictured blindfolded. She does not see persons; if she did, she might empathize with some and not others.

Attorney General nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, according to interviews and documents. Details of the role played by Holder, who was deputy attorney general at the time, have not been publicly known until now. However, the new disclosures are of particular interest because Republican senators vow to revisit Holder's role during his confirmation hearings next week.

In a seemingly unprecedented move, President Bush yesterday revoked a pardon he had issued just 24 hours earlier for a politically connected real estate developer who defrauded hundreds of low-income home buyers - acknowledging that White House aides had not fully described the scope of the crimes that had been committed and the context of the clemency application. The unexpected Christmas Eve reversal came after it was discovered that the pardon of Isaac Toussie had not met Justice Department guidelines, and that Toussie's father had donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee, prompting some of Toussie's victims to complain that he had been bailed out thanks to his White House ties.

Pentagon is working to aid military families The column "Bolster military families" (Commentary, Nov.23) rightly highlighted the challenges that many military families face in their daily lives as a result of frequent reassignments and deployments of loved ones. The good news is that they do not face these challenges alone. The Department of Defense and the military services have long recognized that while we recruit individuals, we retain families - families that need our support. Over the years, we have made a great deal of progress in providing that support.

In the spirit of the holiday season, and his last one in the White House, President George W. Bush has pardoned two turkeys and 14 felons. And yet, Martha Stewart remains unforgiven. Now, those who have tried to do a Martha-style holiday - I confess, I created a "mosaic" of herbs under the turkey's skin one year - probably think she should never be forgiven. But I'm talking about her crimes against the stock market, not the sanity of the average homemaker. Stewart, as you might recall, was convicted in 2004 of lying to prosecutors investigating the suspicious timing of a stock sale.

Cycling Tour de France 8:30 a.m. [Versus] If you watch them riding their bikes, does that count as exercise? Maybe if you eat an energy bar during the coverage? (And don't worry, Mr. Flip does not own a pair of bike shorts.) Sports talk Around the Horn 5 p.m. [ESPN] If they were really firing the ball to one another as in true around the horn, Mr. Flip is guessing that somebody might throw one at Jay Mariotti's head. Sports talk Pardon the Interruption 5:30 p.m. [ESPN] Ever notice how neither one of these guys ever actually says "pardon" when he interrupts the other?

Our zoo needs money so it can remain accredited by some snooty zoological society types, so here's an idea: Sell the naming rights to the new baby elephant. We could end up with something like Comcast the Elephant at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. I realize that twists the tongue, but we could be talking hundreds of thousands to keep the lights on and the lions fed. Or maybe this would work: The Constellation Energy Elephant at the Maryland Zoo - $1 million in utility rebates over the next 10 years and the state forgets all questions about the 1999 deregulation deal.

Where the Ravens fall in the latest power rankings: ESPN.com No. 25: A day after his team lost its seventh straight game, coach Brian Billick thought it was the appropriate time to announce that he will be back next season. You'll pardon Ravens fans if they're not exactly high-fiving each other about the news. CBSSports.com No. 26: After that loss to the Patriots, they packed it in against the Colts. Maybe it's time to see whether Troy Smith can be the long-term answer, although it won't happen this week.

The president defended his decision last week to commute the 2 1/2 -year prison term of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. in the CIA leak case. Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. "I rule nothing in or nothing out," Bush said when asked about whether he might pardon Libby before leaving office in January 2009. Democrats and the prosecutor in the case were sharply critical of the move. ?I made a judgment, a considered judgment. I stand by it.? President Bush