Ford’s pardon of Nixon and GHBush’s pardon of Iran-Contra crooks were done to clear the slate of a previous admin’s wrong-doing, which was far less ass-covering (at least in terms of public perception) than a sitting president getting his immediate close circle of conspiring friends and allies sprung would be. Here, GW would be pardoning those who undeniably were working under his watch. Only Nixon’s act of firing Cox was similarly self-serving, and, if I remember correctly from my childhood, the American people didn’t react fondly to that approach.

I’m hoping that Fitzpatrick is putting this in his formulation, because it would be a lot harder in the court of public opinion for GW to say “domini, domini, domini, you’re all free now” to a list of 15-20 indicted cronies than if it’s just Scooter and Karl.

Also, depending on the charges brought, pardons will be more or less difficult for the public to swallow. If Fitzpatrick pushes the conspiracy and outing of a CIA agent angle of the crime rather than the more easily prosecuted but not-so-troubling crimes of false statements and maybe even perjury, then the American public, especially the national security obsessed wing of the right, will spurn efforts to sweep this under the rug.

So the best case scenario in my mind would be more than 10 indictments brought, with some of them being related to treason, or at least, conspiracy. The higher up the food chain the indictments go, the fewer needed to quicken the mortar around Bush’s lame-duck feet.

Being out-of-pocket and not blogging for 5 days was certainly a wierd experience! And maybe that’s a little wierd that it was so wierd! So, here are some stories that it seems like I missed blogging about: RoveGate With Special…