By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My head is spinning around like Linda Blair’s noggin did in “The Exorcist.”

Donald Trump handed out 20 presidential pardons for assorted crimes and criminals who committed them. They are an array of corrupt politicians, former campaign aides, former military contractors. They all have something in common: They’re all friends and allies of Donald Trump.

One of them really caught my eye. The POTUS pardoned former Congressman Steve Stockman, a two-non-consecutive-term politician from Southeast Texas who was in the middle of a lengthy federal prison term for assorted campaign finance violations.

Stockman is a buffoon. He’s a corrupt one at that. He also had the amazing good luck in being a member of the Contract With America Republican class of candidates in 1994. His luck played out when he defeated a veteran Democratic lawmaker, the late Jack Brooks, who at the time of his 1994 election loss was chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

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I was at the tail-end of an 11-year run as editorial page editor of the Beaumont Enterprise when that stunner occurred. I left the Golden Triangle in January 1995 so I didn’t have the, um, pleasure of watching Stockman make an ass of himself from a ringside seat.

Stockman served one term before losing his re-election two years later. He then would be elected some time after that and served another single term before deciding to run for the U.S. Senate.

Stockman — along with the other pardon recipients — remains a convicted felon. I hasten to point that fact out. Indeed, the acceptance of the pardon only serves to admit wrongdoing.

So those who get the pardons will go to their graves as convicted felons. What’s more, Donald Trump will check out of this world eventually as the man who once again has abused the pardon power he inherited as president of the United States.