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Kurt Daims....
....the issue of pa pardon, is something we need to get ahead of but I disagree about the aggressiveness of our approach.
Mr. Ford did never pardon Mr. Nixon. He didn't pardon him. He used the word pardon, but he just flumoxed everybody. The President has broad pardon powers but he does not have the power to turn into a pardon something which is not. He cannot poke David in the eye and say 'I'm pardoning David'. He cannot send his henchmen out on all kinds of providious missions with the tacit promise of a pardon and then pardon them and say 'this is a pardon' when it is in fact collusion or conspiracy.
14 Sept. 2008
David Swanson...
On Tuesday, September 16th, our task is to define the power of the presidential pardon. We can start on Tuesday morning by all making three phone calls to (202) 224-3121 and asking for our representative and then our two senators. What we want is for them to immediately introduce a bill stating roughly this:
The presidential pardon power shall not include the power to self-pardon the president, or to pardon any staff or contractors of the executive branch, including the vice president, of crimes authorized by the president, or to preemptively pardon any individuals of crimes for which they have not yet been convicted.
If they tell you there is not time to pass it, tell them that the point is not to pass it. It would be vetoed or signing statemented or ignored. The failure of this Congress to recognize two years ago that there was nothing to be gained by passing bills has resulted in a great many deaths and tremendous suffering. The point is to get 100 cosponsors onto the thing in a week and put the issue of pardons into the news, and that is completely achievable, and the bill can be reintroduced in the next Congress.
Also on Tuesday, contact the Obama and McCain campaigns, their local offices and national, their discussion forums and staff. Find out when they will be in your area. Find out what groups are working on bird-dogging them, what groups are submitting surveys to them, etc. Plan any possible way in which you can insist that they publicly oppose the idea of presidential self-pardons and preemptive pardons. The purpose of this is not to use our issue to influence the all-important eighth consecutive Most Important Election of Your Lifetime. The purpose is to use the election to advance something much larger than any single election, the future life of a government of laws rather than a government of men and women.
14 Sept. 2008
Me.....
"We will have to dig deeper to find more solid legal definitions but I can say to you this.....the list of the guilty is very long and quite incomplete, infact it is very extensive and for this reason must be kept short or we shall fail in our mission. And here is my personal view......Senator Obama, as part of Congress is already complicant. All of the Congress is as guilty as Nancy Pelosi is e.g. If there are exceptions, then they are so few that we can count them on the fingers of one single hand. Obama cannot pardon Bush. Once more, Obama cannot pardon Bush. He can attempt to bullshit us into believing he has pardoned Bush but all it would be is a false or at least a preempted pardon. It would be outright collusion. Now, I am no lawyer and even I can understand this clearly. Can Obama?"
