Tornado Alley (PROG)

[mr40]

But it was OK for Obama to pardon 1,927 criminals? Or Chelsea Manning who gave US documents to WikiLeaks? The Hammonds didn't sell drugs nor injure anyone!

The Obama pardon you should be mad about: Oscar Lopez Rivera

What was Obama thinking, however, when he ordered the release of Oscar Lopez Rivera? During the 1970s, Lopez Rivera headed a Chicago-based cell of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), which waged a futile but violent struggle to win Puerto Rican independence.

The FALN claimed responsibility for more than 120 bombings between 1974 and 1983 in a wave of senseless destruction that killed six and injured dozens.
In 1981, a federal court in Chicago sentenced Lopez Rivera, then 37, to 55 years for seditious conspiracy, armed robbery, interstate transportation of firearms and conspiracy to transport explosives with intent to destroy government property.

Notably, the seditious-conspiracy charge was not some "thought crime," as Lopez Rivera's lawyer has said: The indictment listed 28 Chicago-area bombings, some of which caused injuries, as "overt acts" in support of the conspiracy.

FBI agents discovered dynamite, detonators and firearms at two residences occupied by Lopez Rivera. At trial, a cooperating witness from the FALN testified that Lopez Rivera personally trained him in bomb-making.

So Lopez Rivera is neither a low-level offender nor a nonviolent one. Nor, crucially, is he repentant.

He defiantly challenged the legitimacy of the court that tried him. Shortly after entering federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan., he and FALN members on the outside hatched an escape plan; the FBI foiled it by arresting Lopez Rivera's would-be helpers, who were armed with guns and explosives. A conviction for that escape attempt added 15 years to his sentence.

In 1999, Lopez Rivera was one of 16 imprisoned Puerto Rican terrorists to whom then-President Bill Clinton offered executive clemency.

He refused, reportedly because Clinton's offer did not include one of the FALN members who had tried to break him out of Leavenworth.

In addition, Clinton required the Puerto Ricans to renounce violence as a condition of receiving clemency.

Obama's offer this week came with no such requirement — in puzzling contrast not only to Clinton's policy in 1999, but also to White House statements that Chelsea Manning deserved clemency because she accepted responsibility and showed remorse.

Not so for Lopez Rivera. True, the 74-year-old probably no longer threatens the community; and yes, 35 years is a long time, perhaps even "a sufficient amount of time," as a senior administration official put it. Lopez Rivera served honorably in Vietnam before undergoing what todahttp://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-oscar-lopez-rivera-bombings-clemency-20170119-story.htmly might be called "self-radicalization."

Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-oscar-lopez-rivera-bombings-clemency-20170119-story.html

2 convicts pardoned by Obama now back in prison
'Literally given a 2nd chance to become a productive member of society and has wasted it'

Last week, Carol Denise Richardson violated the terms of release from her previous life sentence by stealing $60 worth of laundry detergent. The 49-year-old woman had been released on July 28, 2016, after Obama granted her clemency.

Richardson initially received a life sentence for a federal conviction of conspiracy to possess 50 grams or more of crack cocaine with intent to distribute and two counts of actual possession of the drug with intent to distribute, according to Breitbart Texas.

“This defendant was literally given a second chance to become a productive member of society and has wasted it,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ted Imperato wrote in a statement.

Robert Martinez Gill, another criminal who was freed from life in prison by Obama, similarly re-offended and is now back in behind bars. The 68-year-old Gill had been sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and heroin.

Read more at http://mobile.wnd.com/2017/06/2-convicts-pardoned-by-obama-now-back-in-prison/#f6i4u5y6pfO1RXjB.99