People who are obsessed with the appearance of balance naturally freak out when something happens that is so crazy that its natural consequence would look unbalanced under normal circumstances. For example, sending a shitload of government officials to prison is normally the kind of cuckoo nutjobbery that only a Gingrich Congress and a compliant national press corps would even consider. These Bushies are normal guys like you and me. If I was a prominent reporter like Stuart Taylor Jr., I would know that because I just came back from a great cocktail party where I schmoozed with two or three of them. These guys aren’t non-wealthy minorities, after all. They’re real people. The thought of people like them going to prison is almost too much to bear.
Or something like that. Naturally this attitude that people who knowingly broke the law should be protected from consequences because that would be, like, crazy man, is exactly what the powerful white guys planned when they broke the law.
Chris M
The facts are biased
thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=110199&title=nightline-controversy
Palooza
Simply stated: Stuart Taylor Jr., is a complete and utter moron.
Dennis - SGMM
I’m certain that Taylor’s plan will dissuade others from similar lawbreaking in the future.
Gus
When I read bullshit like that I understand shit like the Weather Underground. When fucksticks like that write for a national respected magazine our society is deeply damaged, and something needs to be done. I can almost understand turning to violence.
nightjar
I think it’s a dandy idea, and it should be televised. Just think of the daytime cable news ratings, and the rich material for a blockbuster TV mini-series. All that holding individual persons accountable junk would only enrich a bunch of greedy trial lawyers anyway, and cost the tax payers a wad too. Our prisons are already full, and why burden the public with images of their elected leaders being frog-marched off to the hooskaw. And think what a downer for the children that would be.
It’s a win/win all around. The appearance of accountability without having it is a stroke of genius by Stuart. That’s fucking satire on wheels!
anonymoose
If these people are pardoned, they will come back and haunt us down the line sometime else. People skate on illegal and corrupt acts and they end up back in place in some “respectable” position in some repugnican outfit (or like the current GOP nominee, running for president).
Splitting Image
I don’t mind so much if some of these guys escape going to jail, so long as all of their ill-gotten gains are stripped from them and they and their families are placed in indentured servitude for six hundred and three years.
Karmakin
You know what the saddest part of all this would be? Do you know how much good sending all these bastards to prison would do? It would feel good, to be sure. But how much actual good would it do?
Zero, I think. Less than that.
I know what people are saying, it would be a deterrent, but it wouldn’t be. It would be seen as a politically motivated move to criminalize political “dissent”. It would turn them into fucking martyrs.
If you want to get rid of this hydra, you have to get past the heads and go for the body. Crush the idea, not the people. Bush didn’t do this in a vacuum. A lot of people supported him in this. Work on making continued support for his ideas and beliefs socially unbearable. That’s the true punishment.
TenguPhule
The trick is to have them disappear quietly.
Incertus
Presidential pardons don’t have any effect as regards international courts, do they? There are a lot of people who might want to turn in their passports right now, because they won’t be using them any time soon.
wasabi gasp
How about we pay them lots of money to tell the truth. That might work. If not, we can also offer them a Get Out of Jail Free card for something illegal they might have a hankering for, but didn’t get around to doing yet. I’d totally jump on that deal. But if they don’t, maybe we can sweeten it by erecting monuments of them in DC in honor of their wavering truthfulness. I can’t see how anyone would turn down that kind of awesomeness, but if they do, lets just give them the power to do any fuckin’ thing they want and then call it a day.
Sloegin
And in other news, the guy who wrote ‘Helter Skelter’ has a book out that is now #35 on Amazon despite a complete media blackout.
‘The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder’.
Dunno if it’s a hardcover pile of drek, but try to get this sucker on the talk show circut… Like Atrios would say, Na Ga Ha Pen.
iluvsummr
Yeah, I mean we all know that Kissinger has been prosecuted for what most of the rest of the world considers war crimes. He lives in abject fear and doesn’t travel anywhere outside the US.
The day the international criminal court is used for prosecuting leaders/political figures who are not from Africa/Latin America/Eastern Europe I’ll saute my shoe leather in good Thai curry and eat it happily.
Katherine
That is not even how truth commissions work. Not decent ones. The Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa offered people immunity from prosecution if, and only if, they gave full & truthful testimony about their crimes. The TRC denied immunity more often than it granted it, I think. Pardon everyone beforehand and you destroy the commission’s potential stick.
But it’s not as if Stuart Taylor is actually so interested in uncovering the truth.
I wonder who Bush will pardon. Is he going to pardon Rumsfeld & Cheney, or does that do more to generate outrage and increase the chance of international prosecution than it does to diminish the chances of domestic prosecution? Probably he’ll pardon them anyway–if an international court does do anything they can simply avoid travelling there, and you avoid the potential obstruction/lying to Congress type charges that so often do people in. Is he going to pardon the lower level CIA interrogators who actually killed people? Etc., etc.
Incertus
He’s very careful about where he goes, because he is in danger of being arrested in a number of companies.
Brett
This is why we should encourage a more cynical, antagonistic viewpoint on the part of the media towards government and politicians. It used to be that way – witness muckraking in the Progressive Era and H.L. Mencken.
rachel
It would keep them from holding public office again.
Redhand
It’s almost like Taylor is saying that the excesses of The Spanish Inquisition should be excused because, you know, the Catholic clerics supervising it were Men of God with their hearts in the right place.
What an asshole!
Napoleon
He was on the number one rated morning drivetime radio show here in Cleveland about 3 or 4 weeks ago talking about the book.
Edmund Dantes
We allowed a bunch of guys to skate on Watergate. They came back and created Iran-Contra. We allowed a lot of guys to skate on Iran-Contra. They came back and created George Bush’s Administration.
Go look at the heavy hitters of Iran Contra and Bush II. You’ll notice a lot of them cut their teeth under Nixon and learned a valuable lesson about scandals and how to stay squeaky clean. We have numerous members of the White House staff openingly breaking the Presidential Records Act, and not a single charge has been brought. Never write it down and if you do make sure it’s taken care of people from your own party.
over_educated
There is clearly one crime that every politician can agree should never escape punishment: lieing about blowjobs.
RSA
Deterrence isn’t the only reason we have laws; I think all of us have some abstract notion of justice that we respect. By letting Bush, Cheney, and so forth slide, we’re basically giving up on the idea that our legal system should be impartial. This is maybe more a philosophical point than a pragmatic one, but I think it’s still important to a lot of people.
J
Wasabi,
That was perfect! and, alas, probably not far from the truth. A fair share of these people will very likely get high pay low effort jobs, and be interviewed respectfully on TV about the failings of the new Dem admin. and so on and so on
Dianne
They will all be screaming “habeus corpus” if they do get indicted. Unfortunately, that quaint little remnant of democracy will have been done away with by themselves.
Too bad, too sad.
They’ll also say that they have been spied upon by various gov’t agencies abusing the FISA laws that they themselves weakened. Maybe that is the master plan the Dems had in mind when they went along with it. Probably not, but here’s hoping.
Sarcastro
Holy crap! This dude really is suffering from the fallacy of the unbounded middle (that and an unfounded premise or two, but that’s par for the course).
Pardons compel one to testify.
We need someone in government to testify.
We should, therefore, pardon everyone in the government.