There was a time when “the pardon” was rare. Yes, just before Thanksgiving Day, presidents traditionally “pardon” a turkey or two. Today turkeys are “pardoned” all the time. It is a habit of recent presidents.

One could say that President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden have set our nation on a bad course in a number of ways, but maybe none of them are worse than their abuse of the presidential pardon.

Granted, Biden ignored the millions of illegals flowing into the United States for four years in an unprecedented manner. And Trump seems obsessed with impressing his base by going after black and brown people in ways that remove or diminish economic opportunities for these groups.

His administration has allowed discrimination against black Americans to go unchallenged. It has allowed racial profiling of minorities so they can be removed due to the mere suspicion of them having done anything wrong.

These actions have taken away the freedoms of countless people and have instilled fear in many. Meanwhile, the U.S. has been engaged in strikes against targets off the coast of Venezuela, killing many in recent days as alleged drug traffickers without displaying evidence or allowing for due process.

Where is the law in all this?

As former President Richard Nixon once said, if the president does it, it cannot be illegal (let us remember Nixon, however, was forced to resign). Yet, Trump seems to want to practice Nixon’s errant concept.

And that is why we have to stop the pardons or somehow better manage the application of the pardon. At the very least, we should stop the president from pardoning anyone who directly answers to the president or is up to two-levels from being a direct report into the president.

I believe a simple vote of Congress could adopt this practice. But for obvious reasons, we would need an “Epstein files release” type of veto-proof vote. It could actually — like keeping the filibuster — help save America from becoming a banana republic.

Trump may have made history by being the first president during the following scenario: an American soldier gets shot to death by a non-American on American soil.

There are numerous reasons for this. Let’s start by saying the soldiers had no business on the streets of America. This unnecessary deployment made them targets for the insane and those who hate America.

The soldiers were not trained to be police officers — plain and simple. If you want more security for a city, Mr. Trump, then give more funding to cities so they can hire more police officers — duh. They actually are trained to patrol cities.

Just because you wear a uniform, carry a gun, and have tanks for back up, does not make you a police officer capable of patrolling and managing the security of an American city. Heck, it is so disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of well-trained police officers we have in this country.