Bush Has 69 Days to Pardon Scooter Libby - and Himself
We're not the only ones outraged at the idea that George W. Bush will pardon the criminals in his administration just before he leaves office on January 20. Chris Matthews is actually counting the days! His "Big Number" for today was 69 - the number of days Bush has left to "complete the coverup of the Scooter Libby / Vice Presidential matter."
Of course the outing of Valerie Plame isn't the only crime Bush and Cheney committed, and Scooter Libby isn't the only criminal Bush is likely to pardon. As Marcy Wheeler writes,
this pardon will only complete the cover-up of one of Bush's crimes. I'm just as interested in discussing the names of those - like David Addington, or Turdblossom [Karl Rove], or Alberto Gonzales, or Cheney himself - whose silence Bush may be contemplating buying in the next 69 days... Libby's just the guy who got caught. He's by no means the only one carrying out a cover-up.
My bet is that Bush will pardon everyone in his administration, including Dick Cheney and even himself. So the real "Big Number" is how many Members of Congress will stop Bush from issuing these pardons by pledging to impeach him if he does. Let's get that "Big Number" up to 535 by getting every Representative and Senator to make that pledge. Please sign our petition to Congress and tell your friends!
http://democrats.com/pardon
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Bush can't pardon anyone not yet charged with a crime
The whole idea of a pardon is to remove charges and/or convictions from a person's record.
If a person, like all but one in the Bush administration, isn't charged, a pardon cannot be issued.
What are you pardoning them for?If he pardons them for a specific reason, it would be an admission of guilt and then we know exactly what shenanigans were pulled.
No, I think you're barking up the wrong tree here.
Bush is not going to admit ANYTHING.
Wrong! Ford pre-emptively
Wrong! Ford pre-emptively pardoned Nixon before he was charged with anything. George H. W. Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra co-conspirators from the Reagan administration before they were charged.
A "blanket" presidential pardon can be issued which covers all Federal crimes, regardless of whether the recipient has been charged, or indicted, for any crime.
See this article for more information about presidential pardons:
http://igs.berkeley.edu/library/pardon.html
Nixon didn't pardon himself.
If President Obama, after he takes office, chose to pardon Mr Bush, then we would be looking at a similar circumstance.
We are not.
I would not be surprised to see Bush pardon Clinton, and then in turn be pardoned by President Obama.
In fact, if Bush is impeached, I fully expect Obama to pardon him to get to controversy behind us as a nation.
No, the only person I expect to be pardoned for his crimes is Bush himself.
You really should do a
You really should do a little research before you make statements which are contrary to the facts. Nixon, while a crooked politician, at least had enough moral character not to pardon himself, so he left it to a fellow Republican, Ford, as pre-arranged prior to (and as a condition of) his resignation.
Dubya, on the other hand, does not have any self-imposed moral restrictions which would stop him from committing treason. He has already shown we Americans how much contempt he has for our Constitution (illegal signing statements which allow him to ignore laws passed by Congress, use of "executive privilege" to circumvent Congressional subpoenas, secret spying on Americans, secret Executive Orders suspending the right of habeas corpus and the Posse Comitatus Act, and the list goes on, and on).
As for your round-robin "pardoning" scenario, Dubya can not pardon Clinton, and if Dubya is impeached, Obama could not pardon him. The part of the Constitution that allows the president to issue pardons, explicitly excludes impeachment: "except in cases of impeachment." See the first paragraph of the article linked in the post above.
The Constitution does not, however, explicitly prohibit a president from pardoning himself or herself, except in cases of impeachment.