A long train of abuses. Bush seizes judicial power, obstructing justice in the Libby case
Posted by Charles II on July 2, 2007
Please post your obscenities below. I am trying to swear off swearing and therefore have nothing to say except read this and this.
Update: One piece of good news. Olbermann named Bush the Worst Person in the World and plans to do a special comment calling on both Bush and Cheney to resign.
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President George W. Bush seals the fate of the G.O.P. in 2008. « Exposing The Neo-Right said
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MEC said
Can we impeach him now?
Phoenix Woman said
Like father, like son: Commit crimes, blame it on minions, then buy their silence with pardons.
Marcel Parcells said
I don’t know about “seizes judicial power,” since the right to commute a sentence is constitutional. But, I wouldn’t have minded seeing Libby do some time.
Charles said
You know, MEC, the problem is that we can’t impeach them now.
1. None of the Democratic comments suggested that they would now support impeachment. The only senior Democrat who has signed on has been Jim McDermott. Mine is a lonely voice in saying that if we support McDermott in his woes, we will show we care about impeachment in the one way Washington cares about.
2. People are talking about how Fitzgerald’s statement was so brave. Pfui. The least a prosecutor can do in a case involving the national security of the United States is to put his career on the line. Fitzgerald did not deliver the Grand Jury testimony to the Judiciary Committee as he should have if he was really doing his job.
3. Even if Bush were successfully impeached, which I think is now possible, even if he were convicted, which is dreaming, the damage he has done to the law, to the courts, to the whole concept of America as a nation of peers striving to do well as we do good is beyond repair.
I said near the beginning of the impeachment movement that Bush should be impeached but not removed from office until the last moment of the last day. In the interim, Congress would effectively rule the country, as the Framers intended: messily, with great division and very little ceremony.
But now, I think it’s too late. Nothing short of replacing those who will not impeach could serve, and even then, they would need decades to repair the damage, cleanse the courts, and repair the law. We just don’t have the time. We have created an uprising throughout the Southern hemisphere that will not be denied. We have the crisis of the environment, not just global warming but extinction of species and a decline in food productivity to deal with.
I do not advocate radical steps. I am persuaded, however, that they will end up being inevitable, because removal from office is impossible now.
Charles said
Marcel says, “I don’t know about ‘seizes judicial power,’ since the right to commute a sentence is constitutional.”
That point was made by John Dean on Countdown, and in a narrow sense he is correct. But consider this: the underlying crime in the Libby case may be reasonably interpreted to be treason, the one crime defined in the Constitution. The use of the presidential power to prevent the discovery of treason is therefore a component act of an impeachable offense. The president is forbidden the pardon in cases of impeachment. Seen in this light, the president is pre-emptively pardoning himself by pardoning one of his co-conspirators.
And by what constitutional derangement did the additional component act of the impeachable offense arise? By intrusion of the president into what is normally a judicial function.
I’m not saying that legal scholars would accept that argument. But I’m saying that if the Constitution allows a president to avoid the consequences of committing treason, then the Constitution is wrong.
whig said
Keith Olbermann will have a Special Comment tomorrow.
whig said
By the way, does the power to commute include bypassing the process, and does the power to pardon include the ability to pardon only partially (a line-item pardon?)
whig said
And by the way how happy I am to now have MSNBC in order to watch Keith Olbermann. Our cable just got upgraded free of charge! :)
Charles said
Here’s perhaps the single best source on the pardon, whig. Viewed narrowly, the president has the power to prevent the imposition of a judicial punishment or any part of it. But this power is not absolute. In cases of contempt of court, it had already been established that the King’s pardon had
…inefficacy to halt or interfere with the remedial part of the court’s order necessary to secure the rights of the injured suitor.
In other words, the president’s power is limited when it intrudes into the courts’s power to function.
To me, that’s clearly evident in this case. The intent of sending Libby to jail was not just to punish him, but to pressure him. But it would have been better if he had been cited for contempt of court explicitly.
Phoenix Woman said
Yup. The whole reason there was a commutation instead of a pardon was because Bush/Cheney wanted to ensure that Scooter could still plead the Fifth if he was made to testify under oath about Bush and Cheney’s shenanigans.
MEC said
“The whole reason there was a commutation instead of a pardon was because Bush/Cheney wanted to ensure that Scooter could still plead the Fifth if he was made to testify under oath about Bush and Cheney’s shenanigans.”
Yeah, and all Sen. Leahy or Rep. Conyers has to do is immunize him.
whig said
They might as well immunize him since he’ll be fully pardoned by the end of this administration otherwise.