Posted by
Always To The Right on Monday, November 24, 2008 5:55:49 PM
The last couple of months in a presidential term usually holds little
interest, as the lame-duck executive rarely has enough clout to push
through any part of his agenda in his final hours. The one area in
which a President has total control, though, is in the power to pardon
— and after the controversial Clinton pardons in January 2001, people
have begun to speculate who will get official forgiveness
Some speculate that he’ll use the pardon power pre-emptively for
those involved in terrorist interrogations to keep them from potential
prosecution for efforts conducted in good faith under DoJ opinions on
the limits of interrogation. from George Bush
Carrie Johnson buries the lede in one sense. It takes almost half
the article to discover that Scooter Libby has not filed a formal
pardon request, despite a widely-held belief that Bush waited until now
to take action. Bush commuted Libby’s sentence for obstruction of
justice and perjury but refused to pardon him outright, stating that
the appeals process should determine the justice of the conviction.
Bush doesn’t have to get a formal request from Libby to issue him a
full pardon, but it seems unlikely that he would act without such a
request, and the time has grown short to initiate one.