A Conundrum
Okay, so...if you sell out American military secrets, you've committed treason. Fair enough.
Now, say you are the President and you pardon someone for committing treason, thereby making you an accomplice to treason, but because you've pardoned them, they no longer have committed treason so are can you still be an accomplice to a crime that has been pardoned, or is the original criminal pardoned, but your crime of pardoning that original criminal immediately makes you a felon and therefore acts as immediate grounds for impeachment unless the next president pardons you?
Tricky stuff, American politics.
Now, say you are the President and you pardon someone for committing treason, thereby making you an accomplice to treason, but because you've pardoned them, they no longer have committed treason so are can you still be an accomplice to a crime that has been pardoned, or is the original criminal pardoned, but your crime of pardoning that original criminal immediately makes you a felon and therefore acts as immediate grounds for impeachment unless the next president pardons you?
Tricky stuff, American politics.
posted by Monstro D. Whale at
1:01 PM
4 Comments:
It is likely a moot point.
I think it's more or less implied in our democratic process -- which, lets face it, by definition elects people too dumb to stay out of "public service" (which itself is a myth or an oxymoron) -- that the act of any new president coming into office automatically negates and pardons anything done beforehand -- like one long chain of fuck-ups and pardons, like a diseased snake eating its own tail or something.
ps Is it just me, or does reading Pynchon remove any and all fear you previously had about writing long, complex sentences?
If we really want to discuss presidential pardons and such, let's consider the Ecuadorian situation. They elect a president, their president embezzles millions of dollars and flees the country, and they are stuck electing another president.
This cycle has happened at least twice now. The current president recently, within the past year, tried to offer a pardon to the former president if he returned to Ecuador.
Needless to say, the populace was in an uproar about this. Public sentiment was to hang the pardoned president when he returned, then hang the current president for offering the pardon, or something like that.
Anyhow, the pardon wasn't issued and the former president didn't return... to my knowledge, anyway.
Now, I can understand the public sentiment, but one has to wonder if the pardoned president would've been bringing back all the money he'd stolen. Wouldn't it make sense to have that money back in the country?
So, our country has its political foibles, but makes other countrys' foibles look like the Three Stooges.
Usually, there is a line in the sand where politics are concerned in the US. I think big B has managed to move the lines a bit.
"Tricky stuff, American politics."
You betcha. Trickier than a two-dollar whore.
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