Enabling the telling of lies, especially in the mass media, is not only something a liberal has absolutely no moral obligation to do out of some flaky notion of fairness, it is an immoral act of enabling the destruction of egalitarian democracy

The stinking, racist hypocrisy of Maine Republicans' Paul LePage, elected, twice, with less than the support of a majority of voters is far deeper than I knew last Wednesday when I wrote about his pardon of Jeff Pierce, a felony drug dealer who was also charged with multiple other crimes before and after,  who Republicans put in the legislature to support Paul LePage.  And, it was reported that the Clemency Board in Maine had recommended the Pierce, who has a record of continuing to break the law, EVEN AS A STATE LEGISLATOR, not be pardoned.  To top it off,  as Rachel Maddow points out, LePage refused to pardon a family man in Maine who was deported by the Trump regime on the basis of an old drug conviction EVEN THOUGH HE HAD AN OTHERWISE CLEAN RECORD.   I hope Governor Janet Mills pardons him and works to restore him to his family here in Maine.

The idiocy of laws passed as an experiment by flaky lefties in Maine* not only made it far more likely that the last choice of the majority of voters would become governor, they also adopted laws that allowed a scumbag like LePage to hide most of the pardons they issued so we don't know what other scum Lepage has given a pardon to.  Lots of the laws passed on the basis of liberal flakiness of the past should have been looked at, hard, to see what opportunities those chuckleheads were giving to fascists like LePage and scum like Pierce because a good percentage of their success was based in some of the dumbest of "reforms" and theories of fairness and niceness of the 60s and 70s. 

Liberal politics that has being fair to fascists and nice to Nazis and standing up for Stalinists and mushy for Maoists is the wrong kind of liberal politics. 

Liberal politics should, always, be about the protection of egalitarian democracy against all of the forces and all of the people who would destroy it.  Whether those are Trumpian-LePagian fascists and Nazis, or billionaire oligarchs, or the corporate media or some pseudo-lefty ideology.  Unfortunately, given how much the America left has been suckered by the "free speech - free press" contingent who controls the ACLU and the "civil liberties" industry, one of the things it has to fight against are such duped and suckered liberals and lefties. 

Fairness to fascists, providing them an even playing field, providing them with the ability to push their poison into the minds of those they can sucker is not and never has been a legitimate goal of any liberalism. 

Enabling the telling of lies, especially in the mass media,  is not only something a liberal has absolutely no moral obligation to do out of some flaky notion of fairness,  it is an immoral act of enabling the destruction of egalitarian democracy.  America's left got sold a huge load of bull shit when it bought that line from the likes of the ACLU and the "civil liberties" industry.   All  of the bull shit laws of easing ballot access that enabled Paul LePage to win election, twice, and which has helped him hide his pardons given to his buddies and cronies were part of that same program of idiotic "fairness" that took advantage of liberals who are more ruled by their easily swayed emotions than by a clear-eyed evaluation of the consequences for the one and only legitimate form of government, egalitarian democracy adopted by a majority of informed voters acting out of good will.

Maine Republicans should have to wear the stink of Paul LePage, the worst governor in our history.   Ranked-choice voting should be extended to every election in Maine AND IT SHOULD BE LAW THAT NO ONE CAN BECOME GOVERNOR OR A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE WHO ISN'T AT LEAST THE SECOND CHOICE OF A MAJORITY OF VOTERS.

*  Gov. Janet Mills said she is now considering a similar change to Maine’s new private pardon law. Mills was not available for an interview, but a spokesperson said in a statement that she generally believes that the public has a right to know about pardons granted by her or other governors.

Not all Democrats are in agreement on the issue.

“Shame isn’t the tool we should be using,” said Rep. Charlotte Warren, who co-chairs the Legislature’s Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. “People deserve second chances, and when the governor is saying you’ve done your time and I’m going to pardon you, or shorten your sentence through another process, you know, that’s saying you’ve paid your debt to society.”

Well, if that's the case,why not just grant all people who have served their sentence with the equivalent instead of leaving it to the whims of whoever happens to be the governor?   

The power to grant pardons is an extraordinary power that is extraordinarily open to abuse by a governor who, in that function, is pretty much free and unanswerable for what they do with it.  Making who he pardons secret is one of the stupidest things Maine legislators have done in criminal reform.   Considering who isn't covered under that secrecy rule - including people who were convicted of consensual sex when teenagers decades ago -  Warren is an idiot.