Discourse.net

There are two levels here, the legal and the political.

Since we are talking about the Bush White House, the legal level is considered all but irrelevant. What matters is the politics of the situation.

Here the issue of interest is what Bush intends to do with respect to pardons for members of his administration. If the object was to pardon Rumsfeld, Yoo, Cheney and co, this would be a most inopportune moment to raise the possibility that a pardon was not irrevocable.

Raising the possibility that a pardon can be revoked means that a Carter-style blanket pardon of war criminals acting on Bush's own orders would be a lot more difficult to sustain.

There are now less than 30 days left. That means that Bush has already lost the ability to rule by executive order as executive orders only come into effect after 30 or 60 days and can be revoked prior to comming into effect.

The pardon power is plenary and not subject to the 30 day rule, but it is not absolute. Only crimes against the US can be pardoned. Where war crimes are concerned, a pardon is only a rendition flight away from being nullified.

The criminality of the Bush administration has demolished the very protections that they must now rely on themselves.

Not a waste at all: when is it a bad thing to get people thinking about Marbury v. Madison?

I concur with Sherman Dorn; the previous post in mentioning Marbury furnished an opportunity for me to read it, which I am currently in the process of doing. It's always a good thing to go beyond the general knowledge of a decision's implications (judicial review in this case) to the actual decision's text itself.

I was going to ignore it, but as the last comment provided a good reason to comment, let me say that the the first comment's "Since we are talking about the Bush White House, the legal level is considered all but irrelevant." is uncalled for and is a needless distraction from the constitutional questions that were originally raised. The insinuation that the Bush administration ignores the rule of law is simply not colorable; indeed, it has often (tho controversially) interpreted those laws as granting very broad powers, a nonsensical action if the legal level of running the federal government is irrelevant.

According to Cheney 'its not illegal if the President does it'. That would seem to me to indicate a total contempt for the rule of law, for the constitution and for the principles of democratic government.

They make it up as they go along. Time and again people try to rationalize and explain the Bush administration behavior and time and again we discover that the actual motives and behavior were at least as bad as the worst of their public critics.

We are now discovering that Bush did in fact sign a document granting all of the pardons. The flummery about executing master warrants turns out to be just that. Under Biddle a pardon is a public act, no need for delivery. It comes into force the moment it is signed.

Now if you want to consider legal niceties, consider this one. The US courts recognize electronic service of plenty of court documents these days. If 'delivery' is a requirement, then isn't electronic service sufficient?