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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Blue, just because something is bad doesn't mean it is also unconstitutional. I am about as off-the-Bush-bandwagon as you can get, but I don't think there is anything that can be done if he issues himself a pardon, or anyone else for that matter. And pardons can, and have, been issued for future crimes. Whether or not something is bad policy is irrelevant to whether or not the Constitution allows it. Congress cannot override the Constitution by statute. The Supreme Court has no precedent which would permit it to say the Constitution has been violated. Like it or not, the purpose of the pardon power is eliminated if the pardon can be reviewed and/or revoked. Nobody wants Bush to issue a pardon for himself or others in his administration, but I can almost guarantee he will.
By the way, a Bush pardon for himself isn't a "preemptive pardon." It is would be a pardon for all actions undertaken while in office (i.e. for acts that have already occurred, not for future unspecified acts).