The author states a premise in the first paragraph about political discourse being unmoored from rational debate and then spends the remainder of the article proving the premis through his own comments. I fail to see how selective quoting combined with immediate dismissiveness of the source with phrases such as "dishonesty", "cluelessness", "Oh, the humanity" qualifies as good journalism. The author makes some interesting observations about sentencing and the legal process that are helpful. Nonetheless, this is an opinion piece and its biases are clear. It doesn't offer any solid discussion on the arguments for or against a pardon which would have made it a good piece of journalism.