Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueK
Give me a freaking break. If Bush tried this Congress would fight it back by passing a law barring the president from pardoning himself. If challenged, the supreme court would easily rule that that founders never intended presidential pardons to be used as a blank check protection for the president from breaking laws and ignoring the Constitution. After all, we just came out of a revolutionary war to free ourselves from a dictator when the Constitution was written, and the point of it is to limit what the government can do. Surely your grasp of history can't be this lacking.
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I'm afraid it's not
my grasp of history that's lacking. The debate about including the pardon power was a spirited one, for just the reasons you mention. The founders had fresh memories of monarch-like abuse of such power. Ultimately they thought it was more for good than for bad to include.
I frankly don't have a clue what Congress would do if Bush were to preemptively pardon himself, mostly because the idea is so ridiculous it strains credulity.
What I do know from an abstract view is, Congress has zero constitutional power to ratify the presidential pardon. Likewise the Supreme Court. It's amusing that in your fervor to limit what you
think is unconstitutional, you demand that the Congress and Supreme Court behave in an unconstitutional way. Do tell: on what constitutional clause do your base your determination that those two branches have this right?