I Voted To Impeach Richard Nixon: Here’s What Watergate Means Today

[madokie]

Neither Congress nor the courts have taken the exam­ple to heart and stood firmly against presidential crimes or serious misconduct.

Forty years after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Watergate still resonates as one of the worst political scandals in our country’s history. For most people, the name evokes the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington and the cover-up, in which, as became clear later, the president himself had an immediate and central role. The break-in was not a “third-rate burglary,” as Nixon’s spokesman tried to convince us, but a major assault on the electoral process; nor was the cover-up limited to rogue White House aides, as Nixon eventually claimed; it was a brazen, widespread obstruction of justice that set a precedent for later abuses of power by other presidents.

President Nixon used the powers of his office to hide the involvement in the burglary of top campaign and White House officials. He promised presidential pardons to the burglars and directed that campaign funds be used to buy their silence. He ordered the CIA to stop the FBI’s investigation. He suborned perjury by his top staff and obtained secret grand jury information to coach prospective witnesses. The cover-up worked disturbingly well through the presidential election—Nixon won by a landslide—and into early 1973.

But Watergate is also shorthand for a whole catalog of other abuses and crimes committed by President Nixon. In an effort to obtain discrediting information about Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, Nixon approved a break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. He created the infamous “enemies list” of antiwar activists, political opponents and journalists—including The Nation’s White House correspondent Robert Sherrill—who were to be subjected to harassing Internal Revenue Service audits. He ordered illegal wiretaps of journalists and White House staffers, which continued, conveniently, even after one of them went to work for a Democratic presidential opponent. He directed the secret bombing of Cambodia, a neutral country, and concealed the fact from Congress and the American people. He refused to spend funds lawfully appropriated and tried to dismantle a federal agency, the Office of Equal Opportunity, which had been tasked with implementing much of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty agenda.

Simply put, President Nixon placed himself above the law. In a television interview with David Frost after he left the White House, Nixon explained: “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” These are the words of someone to whom nothing is forbidden. This is the philosophy of a despot, not of a president in a democracy.

http://www.thenation.com/article/180885/i-voted-impeach-richard-nixon-heres-what-watergate-means-today

[Uncle Joe]

1. Nixon created a toxic swamp from which many evils; thrived and slithered forth to plague our nation

even to this day.

Thanks for the thread, madokie.

[madokie]

5. You know it Uncle Joe

Soon after the resignation the pukes got together and decided that if they were to get their message out they'd have to control the media. Control the media is exactly what is happening today to the detriment of the health of the USA in the process.
Nixon was bad for our country in a lot of ways, many of his henchmen were the inter circle of the bush1 and littleboots administrations too, as well as reagan's. All three administration were bad for our democracy. In fact we're but a shadow of our former selves. 'We' being the United States of America
A lot of things are contributed to reagan but it was the scum he surrounded himself with where the problem was. Reagan was dumb as a post actually. He had no original thoughts about anything in his lifetime. He was an actor pResident. IMO

[Phil1934]

2. But no one dared try Nixon for blocking LBJ's Vietnam peace effort.

That would be treason. Or Reagan for blocking Carter's efforts to free the hostages. That would also be treason. So the Republicans made sure to limit the investigation to the period after the election. “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

[Ken Burch]

3. Elizabeth Holtzman, the senator New York SHOULD have had.

And if Jacob Javitz hadn't stayed in the race on the "Liberal" line after losing the GOP primary to Al D'Amato, she'd have won.

[Jim Lane]

6. Yes, that was another shining example of the idiocy of third-party politics.

The only small consolation there is that the despicable Liberal Party, which had long since ceased to be liberal (note its endorsement of Rudy Giuliani against David Dinkins), has finally gone extinct.

[radiclib]

4. HUH? An article about impeachment with no mention

…of the lawless Kenyan usurperer? Damn librul media!