A Blanket Pardon

The left is in a bit of a panic over the thought that President Bush might take this guy's advice:

One of the country's best known conservative legal scholars, Steven G. Calabresi, on Wednesday suggested "blanket pardons" for "all officials involved in making decisions bearing on the war on t
terror."

Calabresi's proposal, made in an e-mail posted on Politico's Arena forum, was roundly denounced by many other commentators in the forum, providing a small taste of the reaction should President George W. Bush actually issue such a pardon.
The president's pardon powers are considered absolute. Blanket pardons — covering groups of unnamed individuals — historically have been rare but are not unprecedented.

President Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam-era draft evaders, calling it an amnesty. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson pardoned former Confederate soldiers. And President Grover Cleveland pardoned Mormons who were practicing polygamy.

Calabresi, in his Arena comments, said he did not expect the Bush administration to issue such a pardon, nor has the administration signaled any intention of doing so. Neither has the Obama transition team indicated any particular plan to pursue charges against officials involved in the Bush administration's war on terror. But the topic increasingly has been raised in political and legal blogs and in op-eds as Bush prepares to leave office.

"I do not expect the Bush administration to do this, but I would strongly support a blanket pardon for all officials involved in making decisions bearing on the war on terror, including interrogation policy," said Calabresi, a law professor at Northwestern University and a co-founder of the conservative Federalist Society.

"It has only been 200 years since we stopped guillotining our political opponents, and the impulse to criminalize good faith policy disagreements unfortunately persists. Good and talented people will not go into government in this country if the price for losing a policy dispute is jail time."

One wise blogger suggested a blanket pardon a few days ago. If you really want to see the hysteria in action, look at this editorial:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s ineffectiveness became clear the day she became Speaker of the House and immediately announced that there would be no impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney.

Guided by politics, she said leading investigations into just how much the Bush administration did – and did wrong – would be divisive. What she didn’t express was her worry that too many Democrats faced elimination from the House if they took on the difficult task of proving who knew what, when.

But Congress is running out of time to finally make the Bush administration own up to its actions for eight years. If Congress isn’t careful, the president who already has issued 171 pardons could also pardon every appointee and employee he has ever had – and their dogs. And then Americans will never find out what happened to our country over the past eight years.

Pelosi wouldn’t have to start from scratch: Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the bravest member of Congress, introduced legislation 11 months ago to impeach the president and vice president. Last January, the House gave a first reading of one of those articles of impeachment. Our own Rep. John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, joined 38 other representatives to sponsor HR 635, which would form a committee to look into whether there are grounds for impeachment. Revive that effort!

Last week, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, submitted a resolution demanding that Bush stop issuing “pre-emptive pardons of senior officials in his administration during the final 90 days of office.”

Nadler said in news reports that he was moved to action by the president’s “widespread abuses of power and potentially criminal transgressions against our Constitution” and that he wanted to prevent the “undeserved pardons of officials who may have been co-conspirators in the president’s unconstitutional policies, such as torture, illegal surveillance and curtailing of due process for defendants.”

Nadler is storming the beach; others should join him.

The only thing Nadler has been storming is the all-you-can-eat buffet. These people are just plain nuts, and that's all the more reason to issue the pardons and put an end to this nuttiness once and for all.