The traditional act of giving clemency by the US president happened again on Tuesday. 19 convicted criminals had their slate wiped clean. 24 hours later president Bush took a quite remarkable step, and reversed one of them.

This latest Bush mishap happened once again because the sitting president hadn’t done his homework properly. The felon in question, Isaac Toussie, a property developer from New York, is serving a sentence for fraud. A spokesperson for the White House said that the president had not known about donations totalling almost $ 40,000 to the Republican party by Mr. Toussie’s father, and that he was unaware of other aspects of Mr. Toussie’s case, such as allegations that Toussie had tricked hundreds of inexperienced home buyers to take out expensive mortgages on badly built properties in poor neighbourhoods.

Legal experts seems to think that Bush reversal of a presidential pardon is unprecedented. A statement issued on Christmas Eve said the blame is attached to a White House counsel, but all the same. The buck stops with the President. This is just one of many, many mishaps, and could so easily have been avoided had someone in the numerous Bush administration done some sort of research into all 19 felons who were given clemency. Surely they have time for that.