No President Should Be Able To Pardon Those Who Commit Crimes On Their Behalf

It must be noted that forgiveness of personal wrongs is not the same thing as allowing a criminal chief executive to pardon those who commit crimes to put and keep him in power.  Considering the character of the Founders when it came to things like punishing slaves and meting out rough justice to petty criminals, it is amazing that their framing of the pardoning power of the president is so glaringly stupid as to allow him to pardon people in his own administration and campaign - as clear an invitation to despotism as was ever enjoyed by a monarch of the type they wanted to be rid of.   Scripture has God warning of the consequences of having kings as soon as the Children of Israel start hankering after one, that list of evils as recounted to Samuel is the story of such power, even when they are quasi-elected presidents.  And about that "quasi", the Electoral College must be on the list of things to abolish. 

There are a number of serious Constitutional amendments that should be adopted as fast as possible in the wake of the Trump-McConnell attempt to destroy egalitarian democracy, the rule of law instead of thugs, one of the most serious is to reign in the power of presidential pardon so they can never again pardon members of their own administration as George H.W. Bush did - with the drafting of William Barr, to protect himself from being charged with crimes he certainly committed, as has been used by subsequent presidents to shield law-breakers working on their orders or in their interests as Trump is doing, no doubt Barr expecting a pardon to shield him from his florid criminality as well as the others, Pence, Mnuchin, Voss, you can go down the list, I would bet that you as well as I could come up with at least a dozen off the top of our heads. 

Presidents should be barred from ever pardoning members of their own administration, their appointees, members of their campaigns from having to face prosecution and conviction for their crimes.   Those who accept pardons should face a life-time bar on ever being part of not only an administration or an employee of the government or in congress or the courts,  their acceptance of a pardon should be considered the equivalent of an admission of guilt to the crimes they have been pardoned for, those known at the time, those that come to light later.  They and their estates should never be shielded from recovery of funds gotten through their criminality while working as part of government.  

The things that the Founders depended on the honors system for are clearly not working to an unacceptable level, now.   The Federalist Society and other criminal encouraging anti-democratic syndicates have brought up a large number of legal types whose main work in life is to tell mobsters and gangsters with political power how to rig things so they can commit crimes and get away with them.