I can’t imagine that he will have controversial pardons before the election. With what passes for a DOJ these days, they can thwart and shape any investigation. Unless he plans on really stirring the pot and making it known that there are pardons, but they are classified. And for the CIA killings of “detainees” you have to think Congress, led by “Mr. Tryingtoprovehisnationalsecuritycredentials” won’t have any objections – if they ever even end up knowing about them.

6/38 – I think part of the logic will also be that Congress wasn’t upset over torture and Congress has already granted amnesty in the DTA and MCA for torturers and has also tacitly agreed to Presidential power to torture, by never doing 1 damned thing about it. No censure, no impeachment, no serious questions. And on the names front, I’d almost place money on the fact that there are already (pocket pardons) or will be secret, classified pardons. After all, once you start pardoning publically you have a hard time not —- outing “intelligence operatives.”

I do wonder about the blanket nature of the pardons – if I were being pardoned for murder and torture, I’d kind of want something fairly specific, bc the only thing I’m aware of going to the validity of being able to give “blanket” (non-specific) pardons is Ford’s Nixon pardon, and no one ever really made a challenge. I sure wouldn’t want to have to face the possiblity of a blanket pardon for my murders (Mayers also mentions the young detainee frozen to death, then ordered dumped in an unmarked grave) that might, during my lifetime and with no SOL, be sucessfully challenged for lack of specificity. OTOH, see above, the specificity would also give that much better grounds for Bushco to just claim secrecy and classification.

Be interesting to see how that would work, huh? An existing Exec Order that has not formally been revised, but which has ridiculously claimed on its face for years now that illegal activity won’t be classified. OTOH, who knows what kind of OLC opinions Bradbury has cranked out for them. Bradbury, who is arguably not legally in his position anyway, is who impeachment proceedings should have been begun against – at least establish a record that some in Congress believe he is illegal Acting, to prime the pump for fighting off reasonable reliance arguments later. But then again, you’d only do those things if you were a member of Congress who gave a rats ass – not the dilletantes, hedonists, and self-aggrandized, egocentric caricatures we have.

65 – well, the purpose is to keep someone out of jail – actually the “purpose purpose” was very likely to provide redress for gross miscarriages of justice that achieved notoriety and to provide a path to reconciliation for deviations on government among the population that led to criminal acts.

But there just isn’t all that much that’s been litigated on the pardons front and standing likely becomes an issue. The most questionable pardon that could have been litigated was Ford’s preemptive, blanket pardon of a President involved in “possible” criminal acts. No one litigated it.

But on the pocket pardons front, there’s been speculation from time to time during, for example, the cold war era, of pocket pardons for covert actions. Who knows whether they have been tried yet or not – bc if they were tried successfully they’d probably still be secrets.

But more importantly, who is to say that this particular administration, with the truly abhorrent AGs, DAGs, OLC crews, CrimPros, etc. – wouldn’t ante up with classification of the pardons? Think about what was done to Khalid el-Masri and the fact that his case went up through and including an request for cert that was denied – on the grounds that his kidnapping and torture and use for human experimentation could be “classified” and such “classification” trumped our torture victims act and other laws.

Now think about how a pocket pardon ever even gets forced into the open? Who gets access to info on the classified crimes to start with? And once they have access to files with that kind of info, the classified pardon might well be a part of that record and at that point, no one had to “forestall” prosecution – you have a double (or triple) edged whammy of the crime itself involving “classification as cover up” and a pardon, which is also classified, and with prosecution that might reveal the identity of operatives to boot. Now add on the possiblity that there is an OLC opinion from some point contemporaneous that opines on the legality of secret pardons for classified crimes.

Something like the booting of the el-Masri case has to make you pretty much think there’s not much on the crime front that the courts won’t allow to remain concealed as “classified” The ONLY pushback at all has been from JAG. DOJ has not only acquiesced in the classification of crime, they have used it to insulate their members who have particpated. It’s not a pretty thought – issuing secret pardons for Presidential level crimes and getting by with it, but it’s not like it would be the most shocking thing done by the torture/human experimentation crew.

IIRC, we right this minute have an administration that, after looking at a Congressional requirement for a report to be given to them without censorship or revision by the WH, has said that it will censor and revise the report b4 Congress gets it. And everyone in a happy fervor over electing Dems this year needs to breathe deep and realize that it is bc of the Dems in Congresss that we are at this point – where a WH says they will not follow the law and then hoists and foists an OLC opinion and goes on, confident that there will not be any reprucussions.

I take that back – the reprucussion will be that maybe a Dem will be elected Pres and he will … give de jure amnesty to telecoms and de facto amnesty to all WH criminals. Ah, that lovely “political price” of criminals taking their public pensions and going off to lobbyland and speaking engagements. What a cruel, harsh consequence to face.

In any event – I guess we just see what happens. I’m not expecting to see the names and crimes of the agents who “interrogated to death” or experimented with “enhanced methods” on humans until they died and the details of the deaths of their victims in any publicized pardon, but I also have to think there is something more than a pathetic olc opinion out there for them. Why would Bush think he couldn’t get away with having a raft of secret pardons – maybe even involving the killings of Americans. There literally has been NOTHING – up to and including torture killings of innocent people on his policies and orders and creation of the worst refugee crisis in the world and all that attends it – NOTHING for which he has been held to account by anyone.

Even as the Arar case was having hundreds of pages of investigation into US kidnap/proxy torture released in Canada, Harry Reid insured the passage of the MCA and all its pro-torture and amnesty provisions. Those things were taking place at almost the same time and the Democrats made sure they didn’t make an issue of Arar and didn’t derail the passage. I still remember Sherrod Brown earnestly saying that the legislation had to be all right – after all, John McCain was the expert on these things and HE was for it, so the Dems should be too.

Hell, Bush may well decide not to go for pardons at all. The only way anyone will ever get in trouble if he walks away from it all is if they implicate themselves and manage to stab themselves with a pen while they sign their affidavit. The DOJ we have left and the Congress we are supposed to be looking forward to – they are meaningless, immoral institutions riddled with corruption and cronyism and now “framed out” by a series of opinions and actions over the last 8 years that have fundamentally changed their internal chemistry.

At this point, they couldn’t begin to function properly without going through such serious DTs that they might not survive them. So they just continue on their path, like an alcoholic would, and wait out the destruction from within in a haze.