Marc Rich v. the "Father of the Bill of Rights"
Well, no great surprise really that the Times Op-Ed page is full of idiots.
For example, have a look at this piece in which a Times contributor defends pardons in general, and Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich in particular, while including the following historical note:
One of the most astonishing things about the record left by the founders is how passionately they wrestled with the pardon question. Gilbert Livingston, at the New York ratifying convention, demanded a requirement that the Congress approve a pardon for treason. George Mason, one of Virginia's delegates to the constitutional convention, warned that a president could use the pardon to protect his own guilt. Yet, save for cases of impeachment, all calls for restrictions were rejected. It is clear that the founders understood the pardon as one of the most basic checks and balances of the constitutional system.[emphasis added]
It was also Mason who induced Madison to write the Bill of Rights.
Another of Mason's ideas was that it should be possible to impeach a president for incompetence. For this hack to so blithely skate past Mason's prescient objection to the use of the pardon, in the course of a article in which Marc Rich is passionately defended, is rich.
I don't really have a problem with the Marc Rich pardon beyond my belief that there were a lot of more worthy pardon candidates that Clinton ignored. But hey, I'd like to see a president pardon all nonviolent drug criminals, so I'm never going to be satisfied.
One point that Lipsky makes is that it's the prosecutors who were most angry about the Rich pardon because they didn't believe that the president should pardon a fugitive. Lipsky is right to point out that the president shouldn't care what prosecutors think. In my lifetime I've never seen the Justice Department, after losing a case, or giving up the pursuit of a case, come out publicly and say "Sorry, we were wrong. We're deeply ashamed about all the trouble we caused and lives we've ruined."
If it were up to the Justice Department, virtually nobody would ever be pardoned. Our out of control, arrogant prosecutors seem to think that they can do no wrong.
December 7, 2008 9:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Inaccurate.
In fact, located in the DOJ is a staff which reviews pardon requests, and makes recommendations about them to the president. A case in point is that of Marc Rich, in which it was the view of hs lawyer/pardon lobbyist "Scooter" Libby, and the DOJ lawyers reviewing the case, that Marc Rich was wrongly convicted of the tax charges as result of US AG Guliani's distortion of the underlying law in order to be "tough on crime" as he moved into running for public office.
There is more to the DOJ than your excuse for hating it.
December 7, 2008 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the DoJ were a truly honest organization it would publicly apologize to all acquitted defendants and offer a chance for those dependence to recoup whatever they lost trying to defend themselves.
The DoJ overreaches all of the time. Look at what they did to the KPMG accountants! Prosecutors in this country are out of control because they're not forced to deal with the consequences of bringing losing cases. They can bring a case, and lose, and they suffer nothing for it. It's absurd.
December 7, 2008 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
'the view of Libby...that Rich was wrongly convicted'
It's not often that someone puts in a good word for libby that i agree with.
Testimonials to Libby's private character were not hard to come by when attention was focused on him during his trial for the outing of Plame Wilson. In fact that is the dilemma Lipsky reduses to acknowledge, but that Mason warned of. Certainly if Libby were a private character he would be worthy of a pardon if he had committed some 'non-official' crime. But he was an instrument of offical business, and this presents a pardonable 'guilt' in those who used him as such- and who therefore commuted his sentence (as well, of course, as using this ploy to keep him from turning informer on them, mixing motives irremediably).
Nadler's proposed amendment would fix this issue. The likes of Rich might be pardoned, but not Libby. That is a desirable outcome, regardless of who was more 'deserving' of pardon.
December 7, 2008 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm amazed at all the Marc Rich apologetics. Marc Rich was a gangster, a a monstrously wealthy and unscrupulous kingpin of a secretive network of global oil black markets and money laundering rackets. He made his fortune on the blood and oppression of millions. His pardon was an act of blatant corruption, and the triumph of illicit influence over government integrity.
December 8, 2008 8:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
If Rich was exerting illicit influence over Government, then that would par for the course as predicted by Livingston and Mason.
The issue of the worth of particular pardons (apologies for repeating myself) is not germane to the problem, which is that Presidents have far too much power, and can be counted on reliably to abuse it, while Congress has virtually none by this point (see my previous blog entry for how this can be redressed by modifying the pardon power).
December 8, 2008 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I prefer the pardoning of Marc Rich to that of,say, Elliott Abrams. One,a wealthy crook who also supported what he considers good causes. The other, someone who lied to congress.
More to the point,while I don't consider it Clinton's finest hour ,neither do I consider it something that Holder should have even tried to prevent.
My standard is that the DOJ's only involvement in this presidential right should be warning him that a pardon will have reasonably concrete adverse future consequences: e.g.as a result of the pardon the pardonee will commit a serious future crime.
I specifically reject concern with the bad precedent of a pardon: encouraging others to repeat the criminal act.
Too subjective.
Did I take that position,however, I'd be far more worried that Abrams' pardon encourages future lying to congress-seriously undermining the legislative process- than that Rich's pardon encourages shady financeers(tautological?) to undertake complex commodity manipulations,the prevalence of which will be unaffected by this pardon.
December 7, 2008 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
One thing about pardons is that they really don't have adverse consequences as precedents. If I commit a crime and my neighbor submits the same crime, my neighbor getting pardoned doesn't do me any good. Court decisions serve as guiding precendents but pardons don't.
I think you're right that the prosecutors should only have the role of saying, "Uh... Mr. President, if you pardon Hannibal Lecter and let him our of jail, he's just going to eat more people."
But as far as precedents go -- would any shady financier really look at the Rich example, including a decade spent in exile and say: "I'm going to do exactly what he did on the premise that some president will eventually pardon me"?
December 7, 2008 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yhe problem I have with pardons is precisely Mason's and Livingston's- not that pardons set unsavory precedents, or that venal criminals may skate, but that treason or the like (the crimes of Abrams and Iran/Contra types, or such a crime as Scooter Libby appears to have committed) may be authorized by the president,to individuals who obey knowing that pardons await, making the whole Presidential racket effectively above the law.
December 7, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fair enough and good point. But Marc Rich's alleged crimes were nowhere near treason. Yes, the Scooter Libby pardon annoyed the hell out of me but that's not really the norm.
December 7, 2008 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lipsky is a militant supporter of Israel, right or wrong. He would have advocated on behalf of Meyer Lansky if the opportunity had presented itself.
December 7, 2008 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
A. Marc Rich is not "passionately defended" in this article.
B. The Father of the Bill of Rights, George Mason, never freed his own slaves.
C. Nobody's perfect.
December 7, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Father of the Bill of Rights, George Mason,
_____
The "Father of the Bill of Rights" was a Congressman, in the first Congress, named James Madison.
December 7, 2008 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
So then George Mason might with more propriety be called the "Godfather" of the Bill of Rights.
Pardoning "traitors" worked quite well after the whiskey rebellion. Of course, when tratiorous deeds are done at the behest of the Executive himself (or herself), then the remedy, and in the present case the fault, lies with Congress---which refused to impeach Cheney, Bush, Gonzales, etc.
I kind of like the clemency provisions, having once been the beneficiary of that process myself. I do think the earlier commenter had a good idea---pardon for all nonviolent drug prohibition prisoners. We are supposed to be looking for ways to save money now, aren't we? Well, "Nip it in the bid" Holder won't see the merit of that idea.
I also think every judge and prosecutor should spend at least five days and nights behind bars, in some other jurisdiction under assumed names. This is just long enough to get a sense of what it feels like . . . and the program would also discourage abuses by jailers, who would never be quite sure if their short-term guests were punks or prosecutors. If there IS any difference, I mean.
December 7, 2008 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink