A Good Use of the Last Year

Late-period Obama continues to find useful ways to use his constitutional authority:

President Obama shortened the prison sentences of 111 inmates Tuesday, including 35 people who had expected to spend the rest of their lives in federal custody, authorities told NPR.

Word of the new batch of clemency grants came as the second in command at the Justice Department told NPR that lawyers there have worked through an enormous backlog of drug cases and, despite doubts from prisoner advocates, they will be able to consider each of the thousands of applications from drug criminals before Obama leaves office in 2017.

“At our current pace, we are confident that we will be able to review and make a recommendation to the president on every single drug petition we currently have,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates said.

The early releases apply to mostly nonviolent drug offenders who would have received lighter punishments if they committed the same crimes today. The new commutations mean this White House has granted 673 commutations, more than the past 10 presidents combined. Tuesday’s grants follow 214 more earlier this month.

There are obvious limitations to this approach to fighting the War On (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs — most of these people have already served lengthy prison terms when they shouldn’t have been incarcerated in the first place, and most of the War is being waged by our benevolent state overlords, not the feds. But it’s much better to be doing this than not be doing this.