A good guy gets pardoned at last

The New York Times has an article by Eric Lichtblau about Charles Winters, a hero you've never heard of:

Charles Winters was an unlikely revolutionary in the fight for a Jewish state sixty years ago. A Protestant from Boston, he took up the clandestine cause from his perch in Florida and helped ferry bomber planes and Israeli fighters, even flying one plane across the Atlantic himself. The Israelis have long considered him a hero, and the former Prime Minister Golda Meir feting him. But in the United States, he was a criminal, imprisoned for eighteen months for violating the 1939 Neutrality Act and forced to hide his past from his own family. But, on Tuesday, President Bush pardoned Mr. Winters posthumously, clearing his name a quarter-century after his death. In the last four months, prominent Jews from Steven Spielberg to members of Congress had lobbied on Mr. Winters’ behalf, and the campaign ended with his name among those of nineteen people issued reprieves by Mr. Bush on Tuesday.
“This is a very good day,” Reginald Brown, a lawyer in Washington who represented Winters’ family in the clemency petition, said in an interview. “He did a heroic thing and, at the time, the law didn’t reflect our values. The pardon is a way of the law catching up with the history.” Mr. Brown said Mr. Bush’s pardon "rights a historical wrong and honors Charlie’s belief that the creation of the Jewish state was a moral imperative of his time", The Assocxiated Press reported. “Charlie Winters helped shape human history for the better."
The film director Steven Spielberg wrote a letter to President Bush appealing for a pardon for Mr. Winters. "There are probably many unsung heroes of America and of Israel, but Charlie Winters is surely one of them," Mr. Spielberg wrote. "While a pardon cannot make Charlie Winters whole, and regrettably he did not live to see it, it would be a fitting tribute to his memory and a great blessing to his family if this pardon is granted."
The only other pardon granted posthumously in recent years was given to Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Mr. Flipper was dishonorably discharged from the Army after being accused of embezzling almost $4,000. Mr. Flipper was the first to discover the funds missing, but concealed their disappearance in the hope that the money would be returned. In 1976, an Army board commuted Mr. Flipper’s dismissal to a good conduct discharge, concluding that his conviction and punishment were "unduly harsh and unjust". In 1999, President Bill Clinton granted him a full pardon.
There were no big names among the nineteen pardons issued on Tuesday— no Michael Milkens or Bernie Ebbers, not even a Marion Jones— but for Mr. Winters’ supporters, his name loomed just as large.

Rico says that, every once in awhile, a President gets to do the right thing, and actually does it.