WASHINGTON — When President Joe Biden issued an unconditional pardon for his son Hunter Biden earlier this month, he took another step in his long walk to placing his presidency on the bottom 10 percent list.

The White House has signaled that the president is considering more pardons, maybe "pre-emptive pardons."
The unusual blanket pardon covered any and all crimes the president's son, who had been found guilty on federal gun charges and had pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges, may have committed over an 11-year period.
An unintended consequence: The Hunter pardon has fueled pressure on Biden to grant pardons or commutations to people who don't come from powerful political families or have other insider connections.
Voila. Thursday, Biden issued 39 pardons as well as commutations for 1,499 non-violent federal offenders — a move the White House framed as a traditional holiday practice, especially at the end of a president's first term. According to Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, this was the largest number of commutations issued in a single day in modern history— which sounds like a big deal until you learn that these offenders already were placed in home confinement during COVID.
These individuals, KJP told reporters, had "successfully reintegrated" with their families and communities. (The pardon recipients already served their sentences, some decades ago. Now their records will be swept clean and they will regain their civil rights, including the right to bear arms.)
To add even more irony into the mix: As a U.S. Senator, Biden championed legislation that put even first-time, low-level nonviolent offenders in the drug trade behind bars for decades. But then his son became a federal offender — and Biden pardoned him.
To not make it look as if he was hoarding the power for family, it would seem, Biden now is over-commuting. Margaret Love, who served as the U.S. Pardon Attorney from 1990 to 1997, told me that before the new acts of clemency, Biden "had the wo...