Conservative Lawyers Urge Bush Issue 'Pre-Emptive' Pardons To Officials Involved In Illegal Progra

Conservative Lawyers Urge Bush Issue 'Pre-Emptive' Pardons To Officials Involved In Illegal Programs

thinkprogress.org

According to the Times, “several members of the conservative legal community” in Washington D.C. are urging Bush to issue “pre-emptive pardons” to those involved so as to “not be exposed even to the risk of an investigation and expensive legal bills”:

Such a pardon would reduce the risk that a future administration might undertake a criminal investigation of operatives or policy makers involved in programs that administration lawyers have said were legal but that critics say violated laws regarding torture and surveillance.

(visit the link for the full news article)

LOL-I wonder if Dubya will include himself and Insaney on these "pre-emptive pardons" for war crimes and illegal spying? I don't think he will even need to with the current cesspool of a congress we have in place-They are nothing but co-conspirators in all these crimes.

In fact, the conservative D.C. lawyer circuit may just get its wish. The White House “would not say whether the administration was considering pre-emptive pardons, nor whether it would rule them out.”

thinkprogress.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

From the NYT article:

“The president should pre-empt any long-term investigations,” said Victoria Toensing, who was a Justice Department counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. “If we don’t protect these people who are proceeding in good faith, no one will ever take chances.”

"Take chances"??? "TAKE CHANCES"??? Is that some sort of code for 'attempt to violate the law'?

Are these kind of 'preemptive pardons' even legal? If so, why the push for warrentless wiretap immunity? Couldn't the President just wave his hand and say something like "these are not the criminals you're looking for"?

And what kind of precedent does that set? Could a new President, on his first day upon entering office, grant 'preemptive pardons' for all instances of all activity by all members of his administration, effectively annulling the rule of law?

Aargh.

I really wish you'd gotten this from a less biased news source.

But good find, regardless. Star. Flag if you get a better source. I'd like to see how this pans out.

[edit on 22-7-2008 by Johnmike]

Imagine, if only Hitler had 'pre-emptivley' pardoned the nuremburg defendnats... before the outbreak of WW2, we could of won, gone home and forgotten about all that messy business of trying war criminals.

Wow,

We can now pre-emptivley assume a nations pre-emptive desire to build weapons. We will pre-emptivley present this pre-emptive desire to the America people, and show them that we need pre-emptive action to remove these 'pre-emptivley' desired weapons.

anyone involved in making this doctered, pre-emptive evidence can have a pre-emptive pardon for the upcoming trial.

because obviously, we need to pre-emptivley assume that our government officials will be tried for this 'premeptive' warfare.


Basically, the president is going to pardon people for breaking the law, even though they havent 'actually' been accused of it yet.

Gotchya...