UPDATE: Presidential Pardon Season

NNTO--
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Marc Rich should always be mentioned. It's hard to think to think of a more egregious case.
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Well, there's Nixon....

Okay, just wanted to see if there was any reason that Rich was a better example than the GHWB pardons.
Nope, just more of the same old Clinton rules.
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If "sleazeball" is the disqualifier than you really are opening a can of worms.

Off-topic, but is the Fed an all-powerful demigod agency that can do whatever it wants whenever it wants? I'm not saying I disagree with their action, but it seems like everyone else is over here negotiating every detail tooth and nail and then the Fed just announces these mindblowing moneystorms.

the tens of thousands of other things that are on my plate.
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Zowie!! TENS of thousands. And here I was just trying to find bacon in the fridge this morning.
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sgw, thanks for that link in your comment 11 discussing the Rich pardon. Think I'm going to be quoting that a lot in weeks to come.
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James,LA Excellent points about the faux outrage and many thanks for the link to the TIME article on the 10 Most Notorious Pardons! Interesting how many of them were done by Republican Presidents. Wish the Dems could gin up more faux outrage so things would seem a little more even to the casual observer.

Ah, NNTO, yes, you're right there. The use of the pardon power to circumvent oversight, and prevent enforcement of the law as applied to, say, foreign policy direction given by the Congress is worse than your everyday graft.
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Just wait.

While we're on the subject of using pardons on his own administration, I'd like to reiterate something I've said in the past about the FISA bill. My interest isn't so much in seeing people physically punished for what happened than it is in seeing what happened being thoroughly investigated and brought into the light of day. When the Congress passed the telecom immunity bill it removed the only avenue left in uncovering the thought process that led Bush to order wholsale violations of existing law.

After that, the only hope I have left is if John Ashcroft writes a tell-all autobiography after Bush is safely out of office.

Jay
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I would think that Poppy Bush's pardons intended to keep himself and everyone else in the Reagan administration from getting thrown under the jail because of the Iran Contra scandal would qualify as MORE egregious. But hey thats just my opinion

Remember when Marc Rich issued those orders okaying torture, extraordinary rendition and eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without a warrant?
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Neither do I.

ivb,
journos can be so predictable at times. And then they get all huffy and defensive when you point out they are applying different standards to the Dems versus Repubs.

I guess maybe I should also point out that one of the biggest slams against Rich was that he was dealing with Iranian oil, but weren't Reagan and Bush 41 supplying ARMS to Iran? Again I think thats more egregious but what do I know?

My point isn't about whether Marc Rich was deserving of a pardon my point was that it has zero relevance to GWB pardoning the people around him.
It's Howie "I seem to recall that Clinton did (x)" Kurtz jounalism.
You know, for balance.

outrageous and relatively fresh in the public's memory
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Not to pile on here, KT, but the reason it's prominent in the public mind is that the GOP loves to fling poo at the Clintons, and the media loves to wallow in it. Rich is a well-connected schemer like Steinbrenner, not an abuser of the Constitution like Weinberger, Felt, Nixon, Abrams, Libby, etc.
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There is no comparison. One story is gossip, the other stories reflect serious problems in the operation of the government.

PNNTO
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PLEASE don't mention Gerald Fords' pardon of Nixon in this conversation then. I mean just because it was also unprecendented and it was a pardon for a guy who had yet to be charged with anything and his pardon covered EVERYTHING he might have done in office, surely that doesn't make it rise to the level of Rich does it?

sgwhite, I think Libby was more involved in the Rich pardon than your comment suggests. He was his attorney as early as 1985, up until 2000.

sg
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I think you're probably right about that. But I also think there's something really icky about just getting brazenly bought off.

Elvis
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He was his attorney UNTIL they tried to ask for a pardon. By the way I already posted that link up thread

jay
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Not to say Clinton wasn't bought off but I will say they never proved he was and they definitely tried like hell to do so. The Iran Contra scandal has been confirmed many times over. And I think while getting bought off is reprehinsible, abusing the constitution, deceiving the American people, working against foreign governments, potentially helping along the introduction and expansion of the crack cocaine trade in the U.S. and then using the pardon power to save your OWN ass to me ranks a little bit higher on the slimeball scale. Again just my own opinion.

See, no one in the real world cared anything about the Rich pardon; most people didn't even know who he was or what he had done. It was "hmm, pardon? meh." The GOP decided to gin up some outrage and the DC journos, who luuuuvvvvv false outrage, ran the story into print with glaring headlines. People were like WTF? Who cares? So the only people who were outrages were the GOP and the DC journos who had an easy story to write up., And it's an easy story to write up periodically.
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But when you ask them why it was significant, none of them can give a plausible answer. Because it isn't significant at all, except to the closed circle of friends in DC. That's another example of how out of touch DC journos are with what us rubes really care about.

sgwhiteinfla, thanks for the Libby/Rich link. I had read there was some connection between those two but could never find anything definitive.
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Their connection contributes to Washington/Versailles comparisons, but facts are facts.

He was his attorney UNTIL they tried to ask for a pardon.
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Fair enough, sgwhite.
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By the way I already posted that link up thread
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Yeah, well, you posted a lot of links upthread! Now I see it, had missed it before.
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I thought I remembered reading Clinton saying that he figured there would be bipartisan support for a Rich pardon, what with the Libby connection, but I can't find it after a minute of Googling.

lol sorry about the innundation Elvis. Sometimes I get going and don't let up.

Who needs a pardon when you've got a memo?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,99302,00.html

This is what bothers me about Rich's pardon. That's the fact that he never, ever served a day of his sentence. He fled the country. That alone should have disqualified him. Why Eric Holder promoted his pardon should be addressed at his confirmation hearing. Should that disqualify him as AG, I'm not sure. I'd like to wait and hear his answers to this before making further judgement.

But the truth is that the President has the authority to pardon as he sees fit. If that means that it's done as political payback (or quid pro quo) then I'm not so sure there's a great deal that we can do short of a Constitutional Amendment limiting that power.

We can use the pardons that Presidents make (in my opinion only) one of two ways. We can use it to score political points and cause embarassment to the other political party (Rich) or we can use it as a tool to show how an administration can abuse this power (Weinberger).