11-25-2008, 04:56 PM
I looked into this awhile back. There is supposedly a limitation on the pardon-powers.
As I recall, the founding fathers intended that the president could not pardon himself and he could not pardon a conspirator who worked with him to undermine the Constitution, subject to impeachment.
It's not in the Constitution, but it's in the notes from the Constitutional Convention and Madison's writings also listed them as some of the few cases where an impeachment would practically be mandatory.
When Bush commuted Libby's sentence, my thought at the time was that it was very clever because it managed to skirt the issue of pardoning a co-conspirator without quite crossing that line.
As I recall, the founding fathers intended that the president could not pardon himself and he could not pardon a conspirator who worked with him to undermine the Constitution, subject to impeachment.
It's not in the Constitution, but it's in the notes from the Constitutional Convention and Madison's writings also listed them as some of the few cases where an impeachment would practically be mandatory.
When Bush commuted Libby's sentence, my thought at the time was that it was very clever because it managed to skirt the issue of pardoning a co-conspirator without quite crossing that line.