This is what happens when impeachment is "off the table."

[JackRiddler]

77. The drug dealing, for a start.

Pardons were handed out for some of the figures involved in the televised version of the Iran-Contra scandal. That left plenty of room for both exposures and prosecutions for the new administration to pursue. Criminal investigations could have been initiated into Contra drug dealing (the most explosive front) and the 1980 October Surprise deal (this was killed slowly in a Congressional cover-up-slash-investigation fronted by later 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton). On the exposure front, it could have released documentation of the martial law and military rule plannings and exercises run by North and FEMA under Giuffrida, and material on the Bush mob's relationships with Noriega and the Saddam Hussein dictatorship. (The Clinton admin ended up hosting, in the bowels of the Pentagon, neocon planning exercises in much the same key, under Cheney and Rumsfeld!) Some of this could have been done without fanfare but to great effect - let the DoJ do it, or expose shit through the NARA. Nothing of the sort ensued.