TheAgitator.com
The One Presidential Power Bush Doesn’t Care For
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008That would be the pardon power.
Former U.S. pardon attorney Margaret Colgate Love writes in the Washington Post:
Bush’s 157 pardons say little about his criminal justice philosophy. Most have gone to people convicted long ago of minor offenses, who spent little or no time in prison, and who are unknown outside of their communities. Five of his six sentence commutations went to small-time drug offenders who had spent years in prison and were close to their release dates.
Meanwhile, Bush has denied almost 8,000 clemency requests, many of which were indistinguishable from the ones he granted.
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The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 made the pardon power virtually the only mechanism by which lengthy mandatory prison sentences can be reconsidered once they have become final. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of opinions upholding harsh sentencing laws, urged in a 2003 speech to the American Bar Association that the pardon process be “reinvigorated” in response to “unwise and unjust” federal sentencing laws; “a people confident in its laws and institutions should not be ashamed of mercy,” he said.
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A series of final pardons could highlight flaws in the justice system that would be instructive to the next administration. The Framers considered the pardon power an integral part of our system of checks and balances, not a perk of office. Judicious grants of clemency can signal to Congress where rigid laws should be amended and give policy guidance to executive officials. The president’s intervention in a case through his pardon power benefits an individual but also signals how he wants laws enforced and reassures the public that the legal system is capable of just and moral application.
It is ironic that a president who has stretched his other constitutional powers to the breaking point has been so reticent and unimaginative in using the one power that is indisputably his alone.
The one time Bush used the pardon power to make a statement about injustice was when he commuted what he determined was an unfairly long sentence for former Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby. There’s also some talk now that Bush may pardon all federal counter-terrorism interrogators to clear them of possible torture charges in an Obama administration (Obama has signalled that he won’t pursue such charges). There’s also talk (though it seems more far-fetched) that Bush will issue a blanket preemptive pardon for himself and his top advisers before leaving office.
Here are just a few people more deserving.
I’m sure he’ll get maximum use out of this as he’s heading out the door. Got to protect all the criminal cronies and cover his own ass.
He would be stupid not to pardon himself and his advisers.
Bush has never been much interested in pardons and mercy. He certainly showed little of that while he was governor. I would imagine he will do some political pardons on the way out of office and a few random pardons to provide cover for the political ones.
But not much more. In the end, he could care less about people languishing in prison, even if they are there for simple drug possession (a crime he himself has committed).
There is some hope Obama will be a lot better with pardons and drugs in general, but the people he is surrounding himself with look like the same tired old crowd that have been buzzing around Washington for years, so don’t get your hopes up.
Bush: I hereby pardon myself and all my friends of all illegal activity we’ve committed in the past and may continue to commit in the future.
The President should not be allowed to be pardoned for crimes committed while in office.
Bush has seemed reluctent to use the powers of his office actually granted to him by the Constitution (Pardons, Vetos) and only wants to use the powers “given” to him by Congress or what he thinks he should have.
Just curious, is it even possible/legal/Constitutional* to issue a preemptive pardon? I seem to remember reading that you can only pardon a specific crime, but I could be wrong. It just seems to me that by issuing a pardon to someone who has not yet been charged with a crime is essentially admitting a crime took place. And Bush and crew have always maintained they’ve never broken the law. If true, there’s nothing to pardon, right? Can anyone enlighten me on this?
*(I know, it doesn’t matter to Bush what is legal or Constitutional, and I’m sure he’ll try something, but I am curious what the actual precedent is)
“There’s also talk (though it seems more far-fetched) that Bush will issue a blanket preemptive pardon for himself and his top advisers before leaving office.”
There’s a scene in Schindler’s List where Nazi Commandant Amon Goeth, deranged with power, stares deeply into a mirror and pardons himself.
Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?
Twain wrote, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
God’s: You’d think so, but Ford issued just such a general pardon for unspecified crimes when he pardoned Nixon. Not that pardoning Nixon and preventing years more of investigations and trials, no doubt leading to much too little in the way of convictions, was a bad idea in itself, but Ford should have only pardoned definite crimes, and only in return for a confession of wrong-doing. At a minimum, he should have required Nixon to write the list of crimes and pardoned just those.