After eight hours of congressional testimony concerning Mr. Clinton’s pardon of businessman Marc Rich, we now know that the Honorable Dan Burton of Indiana has chronic pardon envy.


Watching Clinton say good-bye is the worst event in the history of Congress and–Constitution be damned–they are going to do everything in their power to keep him around.


Since before his election, this nation has known more than they ever really wanted to know about Mr. Clinton and increased the collective undesirable knowledge through the passing of his two terms. So now he uses his pardon power to help a friend sleep easier overseas.


Not the smartest or wisest move to make but the Constitution is clear that it is the President’s prerogative. The founding fathers specifically made it absolute. No explanations required. Feel free to use it for political purposes.


The Constitution also allows Congress to investigate any abuses. Unfortunately, that particular power is far weaker than presidential pardon precisely because pardon is absolute.


Mr. Rich traded with the enemy. Mr. Rich avoided paying $48M in taxes. Mr. Rich is a fugitive from Justice. Mr. Rich is also innocent until proven guilty.


It’s unfortunate that the wealthy can buy their way around anything. It’s unfortunate that Presidents make the pardons they do. Maybe you wouldn’t do it. Maybe I wouldn’t do it. We don’t count in the pardon process. Neither does anybody else.


The Republicans are trying their best not to invoke Aristotle’s maxim of “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”


Their lust to end FDR’s democratic reign through presidential term limits backfired when Reagan became a clear choice for a hypothetical third term in 1988. The Republicans know that they have power now so any talk about limiting pardon power would be self-destructive.


They know it will hurt Dubya and every other president with every possible political necessity that the pardon can cure. George Herbert used it for his scumbag administration in 1992. Carter used it for forgiving soldiers that went AWOL in Vietnam. Ford used it to forgive Nixon and spare the U.S. the embarrassment that South Korea recently gave to their own president.


Now go way back. Washington pardoned traitors. Adams pardoned seditionists.


But Marc Rich traded with the enemy… and so does every other neoliberal, transnational POS corporation. They say he traded with Iran during the hostage crisis in 1979. Can you identify the enemy at any given moment?


Today it’s Oceania, tomorrow it’s Eurasia. Marc Rich might as well be George Orwell’s famous Emanuel Goldstein character. Not one news station has one video clip of Mr. Rich. On top of that, there is not one color photo and the black and white image shown on TV looks dated from about 1979. Marc Rich might as well be an alleged person while he allegedly traded with the enemy and allegedly failed to pay his taxes.


Can anyone in the media produce maybe a family picture or even a picture of him at a conference table with other wealthy white guys? How about a live telephone call on CNN from wherever Mr. Rich now lives?


According to the known powers in the Constitution, what’s done is done. Don’t waste your brain power on this Clinton scandal because there is probably nothing there. Pay no attention to that man behind the camera.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*


3 − = null

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>