From: tmayer@neit.cgd.ucar.edu (Tom Mayer)
Subject: Re: George Bush pardons criminals
Organization: Climate and Global Dynamics Division/NCAR, Boulder, CO
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 18:09:22 GMT

In article <bhayden.725731091@teal> bhayden@teal.csn.org (Bruce Hayden) writes:
>eck@panix.com (Mark Eckenwiler) writes:
>
>>In <Dec.29.13.58.49.1992.2135@romulus.rutgers.edu>, kaldis@romulus.rutgers.edu sez:
>
>>Which means that North is factually, but not legally, guilty.  If you
>>missed Al Thompson's attempt earlier this year to muddy this
>>distinction (and my repeated explanations of why his take on the law
>>was wrong), I will be more than happy to disabuse you of the erroneous
>>notion that North's conduct was not criminal.
>
>I don't understand how you can be exonerated from a crime, and
>yet you can be factually guilty. The judicial determination of
>the guilt was essentially overturned. Yet you can sit there and
>say that he was guilty anyway. 
>
>I do not believe that you sat through the entire trial. Therefore,
>you are acting as a jury probably based on newspaper accounts of
>the trial. This is exactly like the Rodney King trial, where
>a great number of peoplwho didn't sit through all ofhe
>testimony were sure that the 4 cops brutalized Mr. King. 
>
      I don't believe you understand the basis on which North's conviction
      was overturned.   The appeals court did not say than North did
      not commit the offences with which he was charged.  The court
      (mostly Reagan appointees) came up with the novel idea that 
      not only was North's testomony before Conress inadmissable at his
      trial but that the prosecutor had to show that the testimony 
      of all of the witnesses at the trial had not been affected by 
      watching the Iran-Contra hearings.  This made the prosecutors task
      virtually impossible.  By the way if North really believed he was
      innocent he could of testified before Congress without immunity, but
      then again he would have surely gone to jail in that case.
 
      I'm on the City Council here in Louisville Colorado.  To illustrate
      what North did let me set up the following scenario.  Say the
      the mayor of our town wants to give money to the Kiwanis but the
      council says no and in fact passes an ordinance specifically
      prohibiting that.  Then the Mayor goes out sells city police vehichles
      on the black market.  With the money he gets he has eneough to buy
      back a police car plus use the profits to give money to the Kiwanis folks.
      I'm sorry but when we find out about it the Mayor is going to jail.
      First for illegally misappropriating city property and then for 
      violating the ordinance prohibiting giving the money to the Kiwanis.
 
      The Iran-Contra situation is exactly analaous to this.  In fact during
      the Vietnam war one of the reasons given for why the president didn't
      need a declaration of war was that since Congress had the power of the
      purse they could always stop the war by cutting off the funding.
      In the case of the Contras Congress did just that.  They prohibited
      any funding of the Contras and the executive went ahead and ignored it.
      To say that this is simply a "policy difference" is a gross mis-use
      of the language.  In fact what North-Poindexter-Bush-Reagan did
      was establish the basis for an elected dictator answerable to no
      one.  After all there was a reason that the founding fathers set up
      3 branches of government and I don't see an exemption in the constitution
      for foreign policy.
 
 
>It has been repeatedly said that with an unlimited budget, one
>can convict anyone of something. That is what happened here. 
>Without any of the normal budgetary restraints placed on 
>prosecutors to enforce some sort of prosecutorial discipline,
>you have multimillion dollar prosecutions of what are at best
>trivial offenses. 
 
      Repeating an untrue statement really doesn't make it true.
      The fact of the matter is that crimes were committed.
      Crimes such as perjury before Congress and misappropriation of
      government funds and equipment.  I find it odd that that so
      many Republicans have turned on Walsh (a lifelong Republican)
      for trying to prosecute law breakers.  But then again Walsh
      is one of those old fashioned conservatives who believes the law
      applies to everyone.  One reason I stopped being a conservative
      was just the sort of cynicism you see from the Reagan-Bush-North 
      folks.  Laws were made for the other guys, not for important people
      like ourselves.
 
>
>Bruce E. Hayden
>(303) 758-8400
>bhayden@csn.org
>

                                   Tom Mayer
 
                                   NCAR, Boulder Co.