George Bush is such a tool:
WASHINGTON – The pardons President George W. Bush granted this week couldn’t have been better Christmas gifts if Santa himself had delivered them.
But a Brooklyn, N.Y., man, Isaac Robert Toussie, received the legal equivalent of a lump of coal.
Toussie, convicted of making to the Housing and Urban Development Department and of mail fraud, was among 19 people pardoned Tuesday.
But after learning in news reports that Toussie’s father had donated tens of thousands of dollars to the a few months ago, as well as other information, the White House issued an extraordinary statement Wednesday saying the president was reversing his decision on Toussie’s case.
I have no idea what Toussie did, or if he deserves a pardon, but what kind of sadistic jerk grants a guy a pardon and then takes it away?
The Bush administration is apparently taking away the pardon because they discovered Toussie’s father donated money to the party, and they’re worried that it “might create an appearance of impropriety.” So it has nothing to do with his crimes or the sincerity of his remorse. It’s all about trying not to make the Bush administration look bad.
Is this even legal? The president has a constitutional power to pardon people, but once someone is pardoned, surely only the courts can convict him? Toussie’s been out of prison for a while now, but if he had been in prison would he have been let out and then required to go back inside?
What’s the limit here? Can the president pardon a bunch of people and then threaten to un-pardon them if they don’t do what he says? Can he free someone from jail and then throw them back inside if some member of their family does something that displeases him?
This doesn’t seem like something the president should be able to do.
Damn. Wish it was Illinois; we’d have an easy explanation: “the check bounced.”