Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
Kitsune wrote:Not that I would recommend it but Bush could pardon Timothy McVay and what would it really do?Knife wrote:This is a non starter. A pardon for a dead guy just clears the record and does nothing for the dead guy. Not a pardon per say, rather a clerical move.
This is getting off topic, but you've gotten me curious: what group would be appeased by such a pardon?Knife wrote:Kitsune wrote:Not that I would recommend it but Bush could pardon Timothy McVay and what would it really do?Knife wrote:This is a non starter. A pardon for a dead guy just clears the record and does nothing for the dead guy. Not a pardon per say, rather a clerical move.
Nothing but politics. Appease one group and piss off another.
The White Separatists / Supremacist......SCRawl wrote:This is getting off topic, but you've gotten me curious: what group would be appeased by such a pardon?
Okay, so just the obvious splinters. In other words, only groups that no thinking person cares about.Kitsune wrote:The White Separatists / Supremacist......SCRawl wrote:This is getting off topic, but you've gotten me curious: what group would be appeased by such a pardon?
There is always somebody even if a relatively small group
Yes but he signed, and quite possibly sealed it, but the pardon attorney never delivered the writ of clemency. Much as an unserved subpoena has no force the same would be true here.Mr Bean wrote:Three things
First the Pardon was signed he did that the day before, in fact we have him on tape(Gotta love the 24/7 media) doing the whole signing bit to pardon these folks.
Sure they are "granted a pardon" but then again so is the annual Thanksgiving Turkey...it doesn't mean that it has any force of law. Since the person who was pardoned is dead there is no legal action that can be taken against them at this point.Second, there is precedent to pardon dead people, those pardon's were deemed legal, they were not delivered to the beneficiary just sort of announced.
Third there is precedent as raptor3x posted, I've never even heard of Grant doing that and that's fing bizarre. The fact that no one challenged Grant back then did create precedence. So there is in fact hope at the end of the tunnel because now Obama can undo all of Bush's pardon's if he wants to be a dick, please on please undo the Scooter Libby pardon.
SCRawl wrote:This is getting off topic, but you've gotten me curious: what group would be appeased by such a pardon?Knife wrote:Kitsune wrote:
Not that I would recommend it but Bush could pardon Timothy McVay and what would it really do?
Nothing but politics. Appease one group and piss off another.
The thing is that he is no more undeserving or deserving than the roughly 2 other people in the world that Bush pardoned. Because of the "law and order" hubub from the last few presidencies the number of pardons and grants of clemency have been drastically lowered. The ONLY reason this one got pulled back is because the guy's dad is a big time Republican donor and W was trying to avoid a tint of scandal to further weaken the GOP hand heading into the next Congress.Kamakazie Sith wrote:Besides any possible legal issues of revoking a pardon I'm not really sure why some people seem upset about that. I'd rather they correct a mistake than allow an undeserving person off early.
I don't see a SCC ruling as impacting presidential power that much. Presidents can give out conditional pardons and my understanding is that the president has extreme flexibility in determining whether those conditions were met. Presidents might make all pardons "conditional" on some standard set of conditions/disclosures. Given how the pardon power itself is worded, my guess is that if the SCC can't "punt" the issue somehow, they'll rule that unconditional pardons can't be withdrawnEnder wrote:This will certainly be an interesting ruling. It will make the line item veto decision look like nothing in terms of how it could affect presidential power. I'm inclined to guess that they will rule that he can't, to try and keep the status quo in terms of the constitution though.
