Avedon argues that impeachment will prevent bush from pardoning the many criminals in his administration:
Brent Budowski is predicting Bush will issue mass pardons of all the criminals in his administration, and I have no reason to think he’s wrong, because there is only one thing that can prevent it: impeachment.
Well, it may take more than simply impeaching bush. There is, you see, a line of succession. You will have to take out cheney before he becomes president. Then numbers 2 and 3 are democrats, byrd and pelosi, who have spent the past 7 years enabling the bush debacle.
byrd might be more likely than pelosi to not issue pardons before the next president takes office. But, really, what makes you think a president obama would not issue pardons? Bringing all these perps to trial would lead to a diminishment of the very power obama seeks.
On the less dim side of this: it will be clear that anyone bush pardons was, indeed, guilty!
#2 is Pelosi, #3 is Byrd. #4 is Condi, #7 is AG Mukasey (shudder). And, the way I’ve heard it, probably from Jonathan Turley or Bruce Fein, is that merely initiating a formal impeachment inquiry prevents the president from pardoning anyone. But all of a sudden, I’m wondering how it works if they want to keep the investigation open all the way up to the inaugural of Obama, but that would be the plan. But, and I fervently pray you are wrong, Obama may indeed follow the example of every president since Nixon: pardon the predecessor. Only Ford didn’t do anything stupid enough for Carter to care about.