-Caveat Lector-
Would Bush Pardon Clinton?
NewsMax.com
Friday, December 22, 2000
It's White House pardon time, and President Clinton is weighing
some hot political potatoes. Incoming President Bush has one
awaiting him: Should he pardon Clinton?
Just before Christmas is historically the time when presidents
use the exclusive power the Constitution grants them to wave a
magic fountain pen of forgiveness.
Pardon applications from an intriguing handful of hopefuls
reside in the Oval Office in-box, including headliners such as
Michael Milken, the former junk-bond king, and Whitewater buddies
of the president and first lady, Webster Hubbell and Susan
McDougal.
None, though, is of such blockbuster political significance as a
theoretically possible pardon of Bill Clinton, after he leaves
office Jan. 20, by – and this may be hard to envision – his
successor, George W. Bush.
Despite Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives,
he has been convicted of no crimes – at least not yet, and there
is that possibility hanging over him as he goes forth to become
just another private citizen.
But the precedent of presidential pardons for whatever laws
ex-presidents may have violated is well established.
President Gerald Ford gave such an open-end pardon retroactively
to resigned-President Richard M. Nixon, who hadn't been convicted
of anything, either, but was well on his way to certain
impeachment and removal from office for his role in the Watergate
burglary and cover-up.
The haunting questions hanging in the air as Clinton goes about
deciding thumbs up or thumbs down for those on his maybe-pardon
list are:
Would he have the audacity to ask Bush for a pardon after he
leaves office that would exempt him from any possible
prosecution?
Would Bush then have the audacity – some would say, magnanimity
– to grant such a pardon?
In its Friday issue, the Christian Science Monitor takes a look
at that possibility as well as who's on the list of people asking
Clinton for a pardon in their Christmas stocking this year, and
finds that:
• A Bush pardon of Clinton could be a spectacular way of trying
to heal a nation beset by political rifts.
"The pardon is a politicized process," said Professor Herald
Krent, associate dean at the Chicago-Kent College of Law in
Illinois. "I don't think a pardon for Clinton is out of the
question at all.
"It might be seen as statesmanlike and help heal wounds from the
contested election."
Would Bush actually pardon Clinton?
"I doubt it," said Donald Robinson, professor of government at
Smith College in Northampton, Mass. "But who knows? It would be a
fairly spectacular act.
"Would Gore have pardoned Clinton [had Gore won the election]?
We'll never know."
• The most-spectacular criminal beseeching Clinton for a pardon
is undoubtedly Milken, who had to pay more than $1 billion in
fines after pleading guilty to six counts of securities fraud in
the early 1980s.
He then served 22 months of his sentence of 10 years in prison.
Now his good friend, supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, who owes much
of his own financial success to Milken, wants Clinton to wipe all
that out.
A major contributor to the Democratic Party, Burkle is no
stranger to the president.
• One of the stickiest pardon decisions confronting Clinton has
to do with Native-American leader Leonard Peltier.
Peltier languishes behind bars for the murder of two Federal
Bureau of Investigation agents in 1975. The very idea of his
walking free drives FBI agents up the wall.
More than 500 agents and former agents opposing Peltier's
release carried out an unprecedented march with placards in front
of the White House recently.
It adds to the stickiness for Clinton that the march was
approved by FBI Director Louis Freeh, who supports a continued
investigation into the campaign-fundraising practices of Clinton
and Vice President Al Gore.
• Then there are Webster Hubbell and Susan McDougal, both close
personal and political figures in the lives of the Clintons. They
want their slates scrubbed clean.
Hubbell was so close to Clinton he became his inside operative
at the Justice Department. McDougal spent 21 months in prison for
refusing to testify about the president's financial dealings in
Arkansas.
It would surprise few if they both received holiday-season
pardons from the man for whom they both so loyally kept their
lips zipped.
• Compared with earlier presidents, Clinton has granted
relatively few pardons – 75 since he took office in 1993.
It was not uncommon, said John Standish, a former pardon
attorney, that presidents would grant as many as 125 pardons a
year.
But presidential acts of clemency have become rarer in recent
administrations, with President Bush and Clinton issuing fewer on
average than any other chief executives in the past century.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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