The Impeachment Hearing Room

Your Question Would Be Why I Am I So Harpy On The Position That You Ought To Open The Impeachment Tool Box And Go To Work? Read Below And You Will Understand.

Just Who Can And Is President Bush Expected To Pardon Before He Leaves The White House? That could be one helluva long list!

The questions are really starting to be raised as to, other than "Scooter Libby", who are going to be included in the hundreds (or thousands?) of the President's Republican cronies that he is expected to grant a Presidential Pardon?

You can probably start at the top of the list with Vice President Dick Cheney, and then of course; Karl Rove, Harriett Miers and his long list of past and current Chief of Staffs and various, if not all past Cabinet Members and Press Secretaries, (with one exception for Scott McClellan).

But what about George himself? Aren't their rules that the President can't pardon himself?

Actually, other than if he is being impeached, no one really knows the answer because it has never happened or been litigated. However, the majority view of Constitutional Attorneys and Historians is that a president "can" pardon himself (assuming he does so prior to impeachment).

Art. II Sec. 2 of the US Constitution states, in part, that the president "shall have the Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."

In this clause of the "power to grant Reprieves and Pardons," the founders of the US Constitution did not consider the issue of a President doing all of the illegal actions as those of this President.

The purpose of this clause was originally, only to insure the separation of powers by preventing the courts from using the law as a legal blackmail against the president.

The argument that the president could murder someone and then pardon himself is rather a non-issue, considering that the vice president (or anyone) could kill anyone for the president and then the president could pardon him or her. Therefore, the original question is still unanswered.

On the other hand, what about the possibility of being pardoned for war crimes? Does this clause also apply to being found guilty of committing international war crimes?

Let's go back a couple of years to see what the Republican politicians did for dealing with this possibility:

A Supreme Court Decision in 2006:

In 2006, the US Supreme Court decided that the detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay and other US Military prisons were subject to the provisions as stated in the Geneva Convention.

In this case, all those involved in any decisions to allow "any and all torture" to these detainees could be held responsible.

Each action of torture could then be tried as a separate felony. The accused could then be tried, found guilty and considered for the death penalty in the most severe cases.

This Supreme Court decision occurred before the Democrats had retaken their the leadership position of the US Congress in the November, 2006 elections.

It was at that time that the Republican leadership's congressional stooges, House Speaker, Dennis Hastert, and Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, (now thankfully, long-gone from the House and Senate) jumped into high gear and pushed a bill through that was later signed into law by President Bush. That bill is now referred to as the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Buried deep down in this bill of many pages is a clause that will allow President Bush to "pardon himself and to provide all of his staff retroactive immunity for any possible war crime(s) that date back to September 11, 2001".

So, unless this decision is challenged and overturned by a new Congress (which won't happen before the President's final term is finished), President George W. Bush could pardon himself and his staff from being accused and convicted of war crimes.

It now appears that ONCE AGAIN, President Bush and his Administration will be able to place themselves above the law.

It is so sad and thoroughly disgusting that for a country that is supposed to be a "nation of laws", that this could set a horrible legal precedent and it would show the highest level of hypocrisy to other nations around the world. It would be just one more example that would once again lower the world-wide reputation of the United States, one more level.

I sincerely don't believe that our founding fathers ever considered that an elected US President, and his staff, would ever commit the number and the level of illegal acts as those by George W. Bush's Administration, and that other duly elected US Officials would let them get away with it.

There are times, for those of us that closely follow the actions of our government and its elected officials, that we are so repulsed and disgusted that we are just left speechless.

This is one of those times..... That’s why I want you to click on the tool box above and busy explaining to the idiots who profess to be our leaders that they are duty bound, oath bound to Impeach both Bush and Cheney or that they will be held accountable sooner or later in the courts of this nation, and sooner for sure at the polls in November 2008. Let them know we don’t need them, we don’t want them and that we know how to get rid of them, and that no amount of their verbal lint is going to change our minds.

Do your job or Good Bye!