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Comment by masfuerte | Hacker News Reader

It seems weird that it excludes foreign nationals who are no longer resident. Why not just pardon everyone who was convicted?

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>Why not just pardon everyone who was convicted?

The argument I've heard is that many with simple possession on their record may have actually pleaded down from a different crime, and that needs to be taken into consideration.

> The argument I've heard is that many with simple possession on their record may have actually pleaded down from a different crime, and that needs to be taken into consideration.

How is this related to nationality or residence?

Ya I took a leap from original question, but I was just pointing out how it's hard to just blanket pardon people.

It shouldn't need to. What good is a plea deal if you have to work around it because the charge was originally different? Either you have had the charge reduced or you haven't. Handling this any other way isn't good.

It’s a concession to not seem weak on illegal immigration. If illegal immigrants were pardoned that would be ammo for the Republicans in election season.

the law is always complicated

"because reasons" isn't actually a good justification for a system that's broken and corrupted beyond all repair

No but "because 27 pages of boring and annoying backstory which are logically consistent but result in an outcome you don't like for seemingly arbitrary reasons" is potentially a good justification even if it sucks and is boring and tl;dr.

You wouldn't argue that a mathematical proof is more than 2 pages long and therefore doesn't count, right?

Do you generally assume anything potentially complicated, or anything that hasn't been specifically explained to you, is automatically specious?

It depends on whether you're talking about an instruction manual for a nuclear power plant or thousands of pages of legal nonsense.

I find higher truth value in short, simple statements like "I'm innocent as shown on the cameras" than I do when Alan Dershowitz gets on the evening news to wax poetic/philosophical about what the notion of "guilty" really means.

not what I said, but I will rephrase for you.

the law is inherently always complicated, because it, by definition, must provide general and categorical solutions to a wide range of particular instances.

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