| | Feingold: Keep Bush from making 'short-sighted, self-serving' pardons
 As President Bush approaches his final days in office, speculation is mounting over who will receive pardons.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), a frequent and vocal critic of the president, urges Bush not to further tatter his legacy with preemptive pardons of government officials suspected of criminal activity. The president has virtually unlimited authority to issue pardons for federal crimes, but Feingold says in a Salon.com essay that the president should think of his legacy.
If President Bush were to pardon key individuals involved in the misdeeds of his administration, from warrantless wiretapping to torture to the firing of U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the courts would be unable to address criminality, or pass judgment on the legality of some of the president's worst abuses. Issuing such pardons now would be particularly egregious, since voters just issued such a strong condemnation of the Bush administration at the ballot box. There is nothing to prevent President Bush from using the pardon in such a short-sighted and self-serving manner -- except, perhaps, public pressure that may itself be a window on the judgment of history. If Bush issued blanket pardons it could prevent a full inquiry into the numerous abuses carried out during his eight years in office, Feingold told RAW STORY Thursday.
"One of the things we can do is put pressure on this administration not to abuse the pardon power, in other words not to let folks off the hook in advance," Feingold said during an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "Now that sets the stage if we can get him to be limited in that and not abuse it, so that we can consider whether criminal or other accountability would be appropriate. I'm not ready to say that it is, but I don't want it taken off the table by presidential, by abuse of the presidential pardon power."
More from RAW STORY's interview with Feingold will be published Friday.
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