Commuted sentence for Alice Johnson

President Donald Trump has commuted the sentence of Alice Johnson from her Alabama prison, a first-time nonviolent drug offender, a week after Kim Kardashian West pleaded her case during an Oval Office meeting with Trump. Johnson has already served 21 years of a life sentence after she was convicted on charges of conspiracy to possess cocaine and attempted possession of cocaine, Her commutation is the sixth act of clemency Trump has issued since taking office. Upon her release on Wednesday, the White House announced, “Ms. Johnson has accepted responsibility for her past behavior and has been a model prisoner over the past two decades. Despite receiving a life sentence, Alice worked hard to rehabilitate herself in prison, and act as a mentor to her fellow inmates. While this administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance.” President Barack Obama did not intervene in this case during his eight years in office because the Justice Department maintained Johnson was involved in a drug cartel that was connected to violence and crime. Included in our Constitution is the absolute power and authority of the President to grant Executive Clemency relief. This simply is the power of a President in federal criminal cases (and the Governor in state convictions) to pardon a person convicted of a crime, commute the sentence (shorten it) or reduce it from death to another lesser sentence.

In Other News IHOP stands for International House of Pancakes. The chain has been around for 60 years and has used the IHOP acronym since 1973. IHOP tweeted and posted to its Facebook page on Tuesday that it plans to "flip" the "P" in its name on June 11. The announcement clearly got people talking. People started to wonder if the b stood for breakfast, brunch or bacon, which would make sense. Is this just a short-term marketing gimmick? Spokespeople for IHOP and Dine Brands, the restaurant company that owns IHOP as well as Applebee's, were not immediately available for comment. It is hard to imagine why the company would want to mess with a name that is so well-known and beloved. It would also likely cost a lot of money to change restaurant signs and menus at the nearly 1,800 IHOP restaurants. A woman was kidnapped in 1990 by guerrillas in El Salvador. They killed her husband and forced her to cook and clean for them. She made her way to the US and applied for asylum, but a court says she shouldn't get it and has to leave -- because her forced labor is considered providing help to terrorists. The controversial ruling was issued yesterday by an immigration court run by the Justice Department. US law doesn't recognize a difference between voluntary or involuntary "material support" for terrorist groups, Board of Immigration Appeals Judge Roger Pauley wrote. The dissenting judge said that is the wrong interpretation of the law. Fuel prices are on the rise, which is putting a hurt on airlines' profits. So they're passing that increased cost on in the form of higher ticket prices. The airlines -- like Delta, which said its fuel prices are up 50% from last year -- have already started to tell Wall Street that passengers should prep for higher ticket prices. Customer demand is way up this year, thanks to the strong economy, but the airlines haven't added more seats, so that's also contributing to higher prices.