Richard Nixon essentially appointed the next President

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

I remember it well. At the time Agnew resigned Nixon was already sinking into Watergate and it was recognized that Nixon's VP pick would become President if Nixon were impeached and convicted, or resigned.

And the general reaction was, "yeah... well that sucks. But those are the rules of the thing."

It didn't cross anyone's mind to put forward a theory that Nixon's responsibility of picking a new VP was void because he was suspected of a bunch of crimes, or because his approval ratings were low.

I don't know where this attitude of free-form grab-ass with the rules came from. Has the combination of Clinton impeachment and GW Bush infected the Dems with pug-like contempt for the law? This has nothing to do with whether Blago is a crook. The only pertinent question is, "Is he the Governor of Illinois?" If Charles-freaking-Manson happened to be the Governor of Illinois then it would be his pick to make.

Any system based on a constitution and laws will yield unpopular outcomes sometimes. That's the nature of the thing.

________

On an only tangentially related note, Bush rescinding a pardon is bullshit and I hope it's struck down. The executive pardon power is part of the overall criminal justice system and the idea of revoking a pardon is an insult to the spirit of prohibiting double-jeopardy. When you get a favorable result from the criminal justice system that's supposed to be that. The absurd reduction of the reversible pardon concept is a president letting some people out of jail and a candidate vowing that when elected he will reinstate their convictions and put them back in jail. It's a joke... some guy could be released and re-imprisoned in an eight year cycle for the rest of his life based on who wins elections. That's just not America.

[Xipe Totec]

1. Talk to George, he's the one revoking the pardon. n/t

[tulsakatz]

2. his claim is that he didn't know what the case was about.......

....then after he learned about it, he revoked the pardon. So the only question now is, if he knew so little about the case, why did he feel the need to offer a pardon? And shouldn't he have looked into the case before pardoning the guy?

[Hekate]

3. IIRC, Congress had a big hand in the whole matter. They sent a reality-check delegation to Nixon...

... to tell him it was all over, and when Gerry Ford's name came up his fellow Congressmen asked him to for God's sake search his heart and conscience because the nation couldn't take much more of this. In between they planned ahead: Agnew had to be gotten rid of because if he remained veep, he would of necessity become president on Nixon's departure.

I don't remember the details at this point, but I do remember that Congress played quite a role behind the scenes.

Hekate

[Aloha Spirit]

4. That's correct, as with the Senate seat, Ford, as per 25th Amendment, required Cong. confirmation.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. Ford was on the Warren Commission too

A lot of bad pennies show up all over the place.

When he was appointed not many knew who was on
the Warren commission and the consequence of not knowing
at those times, we only had the library, books and periodicals to research things.


There is some major powers being played behind the scenes Today.