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Trump is abusing the Presidential pardon power
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Wait shit, I think I misread shryke now. The president and congress have the same goals. I read him as "both parties in congress have the same goals", a 'both sides' argument.
My bad. Carry on.
Today feels like the day that makes this obviously not true. The majority of his elected folks do not want a fucking trade war with the EU.
Everything? He's appointing all their judges, he's signing their laws, he's pushing their regulatory agenda, he's doing almost everything they want him to. And anything he's doing they'd rather he didn't, the base that votes for both of them wants them to do so they will go along with it anyway. Absolutely this is about retaining and exercising power and they have almost all the same goals there. Exactly the same goals when it comes to staying in office.
Opposing the President of your own party does no benefit you. The idea of Congress checking the Executive is a farce.
Let's just say that I severely disagree with your characterization of the McDougal pardon, given the behavior of Ken Starr. And even taking your position at face value, all the pardon abuses you listed pale in comparison to what happened in 1992, where a sitting Republican president abused the pardon power to kill a major investigation into a Republican administration secretly selling arms to a country we considered hostile in order to do an end run around a law prohibiting them from supporting right wing groups in Latin America. So no, the problem of the presidential pardon power being abused to kill investigations into abuses of the presidential office is not a bipartisan matter, and I find it telling that whenever abuses of the pardon are brought up, Bush's Christmas pardons tend to get left out.
See above, I completely misread your post.
EDIT: I will say the "idea" of Congress checking the Executive is fine, but the reality breaks down completely - especially in the current configuration of one party in power - because Congress is not particularly beholden to their constituencies.
It's almost always an attempt to attack people because "so it's okay when your guy does it?"
Require everything go through the process of a pardon review board? Who appoints the board members, and what guarantees their independence? Approval of the Attorney General? The President can lean on him too. The only thing that would maybe work is Congressional oversight, but now it's just back to party political and depends on who runs the Chambers. Which would make a lot of politically challenging pardons, like drug sentence commutations, basically impossible.
It's better to have it all centralized with the President. At least it's more visible and the blame lands in one specific place.
Their base does though and those elected folk want to keep getting elected. And that's all that counts.
Congress can't be a check on the executive because when they are both the same party they want to, you know, win elections.
And again, have congress be the check on that power. Which unfortunately requires them to do their fucking jobs instead of protect their fucking party, which is why it's not working.
What is this 18 years nonsense? He's been in prison 6 years of a maximum 14 year sentence.
What blame? Like, to what extent that is at all meaningful? You and AH together produced a list of potentially questionable pardons. Who suffered for it? Who cared except to use it as a stick to beat the other side with after the fact? Shit, how many of these are handed out at the last minute before the President loses power?
Blame is irrelevant because it goes nowhere and does nothing here.
So do you think Chelsea Manning's commutation would have passed your hypothetical check?
Fox must have said 18 years. I didn't see it, but I know it's so.
Blago deserves what he got. Many would say he deserves more/harsher, but I can't truck with that.
He should serve out his sentence. And apparently others agree, because I vaguely remember his early parole and other such hearings being denied.
Ugh. Just.. ugggh. It is hard for me to see past my incandescent rage at anything dealing with Blago.
I don't disagree, but the "blame" for an unpopular pardon doesn't have a corresponding mechanism for redress that fits the offense. The only remedy is removal from office via congress or ballot box. That's a bit much for anything short of pardoning serial killers in their prime, or trying to prevent something that would get yoi impeached anyway.
If a 2/3 majority in both houses wishes to stick their neck out to overturn a pardon rather than impeach, I don't see much harm there.
My real concern with the pardon is Ford preempting the transparency of the trial process. One cannot appropriately determine the "blame" to lay at their feet unless the deeds are known.
A clarifying amendment preventing that seems like a very modest revision.
They've been punished by being awarded the office for 8 of the 13 presidential terms in that window.
All of these scandals have been swept away with the stroke of a pardoning pen. Maybe we need a better set of rules governing pardons.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
What Trump is doing is an actual abuse of the power and it's not normal or part of the "tradition"
Comparing to past pardons only reveals how outside of traditional norms Trump is, which is no surprise given his absolute disregard of how our government works even at the most basic level
I'm not sure how to answer this question. I'm not 100% sure I understand it. Do you mean, in a "perfect" world, would Obama have been checked by Congress in some fashion over the Manning commutation?
They’ve only won the popular vote 4 of the 11 terms since Nixon resigned. More than Pardons need to be fixed.
Probably at least partly by design.
It doesn't have to be! Trump publicly siding with a man as cartoonishly racist as this guy can be something to laugh about and is politically useful.
I mean fuck, how long ago was Arpaio? Hardly any different.
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
PSN:Furlion
Was Cruz the beneficiary of D’Souza’s illegal donations?
Can you not get your record expunged or whatever the equivalent is? A pardon shouldn't be the only way.
Can't expunge felonies. It is literally the only way.
PSN:Furlion
That's commutation. That's what Obama did for Manning. It says "you are still guilty as fuck, but you don't have to be punished for it anymore". Which was basically the proper thing for Manning (ie - did the crime, deserves to be guilty but ffs let's stop torturing her)
A commutation reduces the sentence, a full pardon does this and removes any civil penalties / roadblocks that exist for felons.
(It does not refund fines)
No one will hire a felon. I mean literally almost no one. There is a list online of maybe 20 or 30 companies in the entire US. Being a felon means you are making minimum wage for the rest of your life, unless you open your own business. But no one will do business with a felon. So what do you do?
PSN:Furlion
I guess that helps motivate that potential pardon