A DUer told me an interesting concept that personally made me think

[LynneSin]

Any crimes we are able to prove and have charges made against within the Bush administration will only get pardoned before Bush leaves office. Perhaps that is why there is no impeachment now BUT perhaps after Bush is out of office - then the impeachment will start.

[Midlodemocrat]

1. What would the point of that be?

Isn't impeachment used to remove someone from office? :shrug:

I favor arresting him and charging him with murder. Bugliosi has convinced me.

[Parche]

5. Bugliosi

I dont agree with him on JFK..........butt......

He was fantastic on the hearings Friday, I watched them all last night

He has proof of Bush's crimes against America.

:hi:

[LynneSin]

7. Impeachment afterwards I believe they can take away some of the Presidential perks

PLUS go after criminal charges that could lead Bush to the World Court.

[timtom]

19. Impeachment might not be what you think it is...

Take a quick peek here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment

Cheers

[Ian David]

2. He can still pardon people preemptively. n/t

[jtrockville]

3. Unless Bush is removed from office, he can blanket-pardon

all the criminals, even before they're charged. If I were a betting kind of person, I'd lay serious money on Bush issuing many such pardons of high-ranking officials.

[MessiahRp]

6. Well on the flip side he can and will pardon those who would be called to testify against him

Giving Congress no leverage to get them to speak against Bush and ultimately help convict him. So by pardoning them in advance they have no reason to speak and we can't get Bush anyway.

Rp

[jtrockville]

9. I don't think he can pardon witnesses against him

in his own impeachment.

[MessiahRp]

15. He basically offered a pardon to Scooter when they were worried he was going to flip on Cheney

So what makes you think he wouldn't do it again?

Rp

[jtrockville]

16. Ah, you're right. Silly me!

[NewJeffCT]

23. I've been saying this for a while now...

Bush will pardon every high level official in his White House for "crimes they may have committed" while in office.

Then, since they control most of the media, the surrogates will go out en masse and say that the pardons were to prevent a partisan witch-hunt and they wanted to give President Obama a clean slate and not have to worry about Congress being distracted investigating the previous White House.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

4. I have been saying that for months.

I also heard it from a well-connected, in the national arena, dem.

But who the hell listens to me? ;-)

[rox63]

8. You can't impeach a person who is no longer in office

Impeachment is a way to remove a president from office. Only then can criminal charges be brought against them.

[LynneSin]

13. Perhaps impeachment is the wrong word

but there has to be some manuever that would allow us to continue the investigation and bring up crimal charges as necessary.

At this point, with a few months left he ain't going anywhere.

If we impeach him and everyone gets pardoned then we have solved NOTHING.

[CK_John]

10. Bush will give a Ford type pardon to Cheney around Jan 1 and resign,

Then Cheney will become POTUS 44 and he will then pardon * and all the key players before leaving on Jan 20th.

[bananas]

12. They probably already did that.

Pre-emptive pardons.
Cheney was sworn in when Bush was undergoing a medical procedure.

[derby378]

11. If he's not brought up on charges before 1/20/09, it may be useless

We need to show the world that we can clean up after our own mess.

[zbdent]

14. not impeachment ...

war crimes trial ... crimes against humanity ...

Barack Obama, 1/20/2009 - "so help me God. Thank you. My first act as President of the United States: Secret Service, do your job. Arrest those men, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney!"

[JerseygirlCT]

17. My husband's been saying that for a while now.

Crimes are crimes, and will certainly still be prosecutable. If not impeachment, then for jail time - and personally, I'm good with jail for those crooks!

[EFerrari]

18. He himself cannot pardon anyone that committed a crime he was

involved in, iirc.

[Lex]

20. Poppy managed to do it somehow I think

[EFerrari]

22. Sure. May be why they work so hard to keep the president out of it.

What a different country this would be had Rayguns been impeached. These Republican presidents just get worse every time.

[spanone]

21. won't happen.