I remember the rampant speculation about pardons for months, years it seemed that went on here and throughout the blogosphere. The facts are, unless GW Bush has found a clever way of hiding pardons in a Secret Executive Order [which requires a Secret Squirrel decoder ring and a tin foil hat the size of Texas], he didn't issue any pardons that would directly affect people who served in political functions from his WH.
No pardon for Libby [just a commutation].
Dick Cheney was pissed!
Scooter Libby remains a felon.
Why did this happen, what possessed GW Bush to not issue massive numbers of pardons? Is he a true sociopath that doesn't even care about the people he worked with every day for 8 years? Or is he so drunk on his own Kool-Aid that he thinks everything was above board?
Or, as one of Garrison Keillor's skits tonight on PHC revealed, was Bush hit over the head and finally realized what an awful job he did?
Not too likely!
So where the heck did the pardons go?
What of other investigations, less earth shattering but repugnant were the actions of many of the Bush toads that populated political positions in NASA, NOAA, GSA. Massive wastes of resources and outright incompetence from FEMA and the FDA to the CSPC and EPA reek with the potential smell of ill gotten gains, bribes, kickbacks.
The list of people who could be prosecuted for crimes they committed go from the relatively mundane violation of the Hatch Act by Lurita Doan and Scott Jennings to the deaths of over a thousand people in the aftermath to Katrina.
Where the heck are the pardons?
Is there a standing order in the Republican Senate to block nominations of those who might investigate the Bush Administration? Sure seems like John Cornyn thinks so .. he's threatening to use his privilege as Senator to stop the nomination of Eric Holder. And yes, it's perfectly legal and within the Rules of the Senate, last time I checked. Cornyn has every right to a total jerk, to try to ask Holder to promise he won't investigate Bush's Administration for violations of treaties we have signed about torture, about violations of existing US law concerning torture. Cornyn is protected as all Senators are by the 'Speech and Debate Clause' of the Constitution, Article 1 Section 6.
[Please, take it elsewhere to discuss it: there are two diaries up about it now.]
That's one case.
And good luck to Cornyn, because he's making himself a pariah in the process. Here's an idea .. Harry Reid can adjourn the Senate, and Barack Obama can make a recess appointment for Eric Holder as AG.
Sound familiar?
Do we want to go down that road again? I hope not.
Meanwhile, there are dozens of people who worked for the Bush Administration, who were either so grossly incompetent or have obviously done things which require criminal investigations. There's no way Republicans in the Senate can hope to stop it all.
So put on your tin foil hats and ruminate about what's next, because I have yet to find a person who can make sense of why Bush pardoned no one in his administration at all. Not even Dick!