I need to pay more attention to Dave Lindorff, who writes at “This Can’t Be Happening!” Here are excerpts from an article there today, which has almost the same title I used above:
On a final trip to Europe, Obama, in an interview with the German news weekly Der Spiegel, asked whether he would consider pardoning NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, replied, “I can't pardon somebody who hasn't gone before a court and presented themselves, so that's not something that I would comment on at this point.”
This facile answer is simply wrong. The founders, in the Constitution, deliberately and explicitly gave presidents unlimited pardon powers, exempting only the right to pardon him or herself in the case of an impeachment -- a logical exclusion. Otherwise there are no constraints on and no power to undo a presidential pardon. Nor does a pardon have to follow a person’s being convicted or even indicted.
President Gerald Ford’s 1975 pardon of his resigned predecessor Richard Nixon is a case in point. As Obama, the “Constitutional law” expert, surely knows, Nixon, though impeached in the House, was never tried by the Senate. He resigned rather than face that trial, which his advisors convinced him he would lose. President Bill Clinton also issued a pre-prosecution pardon to financier Marc Rich, who had fled the country rather than face federal racketeering charges.
PLEASE read the whole article here: thiscantbehappening.net/…
And here’s a link to an English version of Der Spiegel (which probably wasn’t translated into English; the interview was probably done in English) : www.spiegel.de/...
This month has been very disappointing.
