Umm - isn’t that the point of the pardon power? You don’t need it for people acquitted of a crime.
Chelsea Manning stays in prison, eh?
Um.
Wow.
That’s very liberal of you.
The solution to a short-fingered vulgarian president who abuses his pardon power is to not elect such a person in the first place.
And if the problem is that Congress is too supine to check the abusive president, then how exactly would giving them another theoretical power to check the abusive president help?
Suppose the amendment that gave Congress the power to block pardons had been enacted in 2015. Which of Trump’s pardons would have been blocked by Congress?
Zero of them, because the Republicans control Congress.
So now what? My radical idea is to vote out the Republican assholes and elect people to Congress who will oppose Trump’s agenda. Sure, democracy fails from time to time. Republican government depends on a citizenry who will hold elected officials accountable. The secret power of democracy is not that we always select superior people to run the government, it’s that we have the opportunity to get rid of the worst of the worst, from time to time.
Amending the constitution for this purpose seems to me like using a nuke to kill a fly. Yes, the pardon power has been abused but it is such a minor problem compared to all the major ones. Amend the constitution to abolish the electoral college or to ban gerrymandering, sure, but this?
Well, it is the only way to change the pardon power.
No reason you can’t work on this one and other amendments too to fix other things.
Congress isn’t directly involved. Congress appoints one civil servant as conflict commissioner.
Except the Republicans are going to appoint a Republican commissioner, who is going to be a Republican, and rubber stamp Republican pardons.
The point is, Donald Trump is causing all kinds of problems as President. The solution to that is to not elect Trump or people like Trump to be President, not to come up with a laundry list of procedural rules that would prevent some of the silly things Trump has done.
I think I agree with you.
The conflict commissioner having their own conflict of interest could in theory be solved. Several possible ways. But worth it? Like I said, you’re probably right.
It’s turtles all the way down. At least with the president we know who is failing us.
This can be fixed easily. Every state should put all federal crimes into their own statutes (that is to say make a state version of any federal crime not already covered) and just never ever use the federal charge. No federal crime charge == no pardon for you.
Or Clinton’s pardon of his brother? Or Ford pardoning Nixon? Or Bush I pardoning Weinberger? Or LBJ pardoning Boykin? Or any of the pardons presidents give that could be considered abuse of pardon power?
We may hate some of the people they choose to pardon but it is the price we pay for having the chance to resolve a systemic miscarriage of justice.