He's already stuck a knife in Israel's back. He's already turned his back on Cuban refugees. He's in the process as we speak of burrowing his political lackeys into civil service protected jobs so Trump can't get rid of them. He's already perpetrated a shameless land-grab of millions of acres under the flimsy guise that the land is a "national monument."
Final Days Obama has been a dream for the left. He's doing everything he would have done all along had he not been constrained by political considerations. Now, with Republicans about to take over everything, and with no more elections for him to personally be concerned about, what the hell . . .
So if you're gonna go down that road, you might as well go all the way. And for a doctrinaire leftist who still has a couple of days left to issue pardons and commutations, why stop with someone like Chelsea Manning, who merely exposed national secrets? Why stop with hundreds of drug offenders, although Obama's political base is surely excited to see more suppliers re-entering the market? Nothing cheers the hearts of the truly hard left - and let's face it, Obama is one of them - than the freeing of a cop-killer. And there no cop-killer they want freed more badly than Mumia Abu-Jalil.
Will Obama do it? I'm not in the prognostication business, but I guarantee you he's thinking about it, and that he would absolutely love to do it.
If you're not up to speed on who Mumia is, or why the left wants him freed so badly, here's a primer on what he did, written in 2001 for the Los Angeles Times by Steve Lopez:
Having lived and worked in Philadelphia for about 12 years, I happen to know a few things about the murder of Officer Danny Faulkner. I've talked to the prosecutors and to Abu-Jamal attorneys, read the transcripts, studied the appeals and visited the scene of the murder.
And without qualification, hesitation or a shadow of a doubt, I can tell you this:
Mumia Abu-Jamal is guiltier than O.J.
On Dec. 9, 1981, Officer Faulkner made a traffic stop on Abu-Jamal's brother, Billy Cook, who put up a fight. Abu-Jamal happened upon the scene, and shooting began. Faulkner ended up dead, and Abu-Jamal was shot in the chest.
A gun registered to Abu-Jamal, with five chambers empty, was on the sidewalk. Four witnesses who saw all or part of the shooting implicated Abu-Jamal. One witness said that after Faulkner went down, Abu-Jamal stood over him and sealed the deal with a bullet through the head.
And yet an international crusade to free Mumia--fueled by endorsements from Hollywood celebrities including Susan Sarandon, Paul Newman, Ossie Davis, Ed Asner, Tim Robbins and Alec Baldwin--has had people marching in the streets from Africa to Asia and beyond.
I've seen "Free Mumia" posters and T-shirts in Canada and Greece. Twenty-two members of the British Parliament called for a new trial, and this month the Paris City Council made Abu-Jamal its first honorary citizen in 30 years. The last was Picasso.
These people believe with all their heart, and very little of their head, that Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner who was framed, scapegoated and railroaded by a racist police force and a hanging judge.
It's true that the 1982 trial was a circus, but that's because Abu-Jamal wanted it to be. His own attorney told me that Abu-Jamal, a Black Panther, considered himself a revolutionary and didn't want a legal defense. He wanted to make a political statement. At times, Abu-Jamal was removed from the courtroom because of his outbursts.
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Mumia is a very trendy cause on the left, and in recent days it's been clear Obama is looking for things he can do that will seal his status as a left-wing hero for the rest of his life. Since ObamaCare isn't going to survive the first few weeks of the Trump presidency (and a lot of leftists were never satisfied with it in the first place), Obama has to do things that can't be reversed. A pardon or commutation for Mumia Abu-Jalil would certainly fit the bill.
Why might he not do it? Certainly not because he cares about police officers in the slightest. He's demonstrated repeatedly that he doesn't, by continually pushing the nonsense narrative that white cops are running wild shooting black men for no reason. That's getting more cops killed, and Obama is directly responsible for it.
What might give him pause would be the concern that, if he frees Mumia, he reveals himself too much among the general, non-activist population as indifferent to the safety of police officers. He'd still be a lefty hero, but he might limit his influence among the public at large, especially if he intends (as I'm sure he does) to stick around and serve as the media's go-to Trump critic.
Even so, I wouldn't be surprised if Obama does it. There's no doubt in my mind that Obama's heart is with the Free Mumia crowd, and his inclination lately has clearly been to act like a guy freed of all the shackles imposed by politics.
Two days left. Maureen Faulkner's heart hasn't been completely shattered yet. Tick tick tick tick tick . . .
