In pardoning Joe Arpaio, Trump has shown contempt for yet another American ideal

Donald Trump’s decision to pardon Joe Arpaio — his first exercise of the Article II prerogative — is not an act of mercy. It does not mend, it provokes. It neither asks for remorse nor enjoins an expression of regret from the recipient. It sets a man who offended society’s laws above the society that tried to hold him accountable. We are the sinners; Sheriff Joe is invited to forgive us. Thus has the President of United States contorted moral reasoning and constitutional propriety. 

Arpaio is a former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, where he made a name for himself as a tough cop on the illegal immigration beat. He sought out this celebrity, ever-eager for the cameras, a drawled soundbite always on hand. Arpaio was a tabloid TV crime-fighter, Dirty Harry for the Nancy Grace era. In the early days, though, he was what the residents of Maricopa County wanted and when Barack Obama arrived on the scene, and openly