Article: Dear Mr. President: Willie Mays Aikens wants to be free.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

KANSAS CITY _ You don't even know how this pardon request reached your desk. You're the president of the United States of America, by gosh, and you might have time to consider, say, a billionaire who gave loads of money to a friendly nation or the son of the education secretary or maybe your brother. People like that.

But this? A man who sold crack to an undercover officer four separate times? Please. And there was a gun. And it all happened near a school. And the guy's only defense was that he sold her the junk because he wanted to get her into bed. Now, how does something like this get to the desk of the president? Someone on your staff must have fallen ...

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