Free Republic

Bravo!Via Politico: Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, likened President Barack Obama to President Richard Nixon on Thursday, slamming Obama for having “an enemies list.”“Not since Richard Nixon have we seen a president who puts together an enemies list and has a whole team pursuing it,” Issa said on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends.” “That’s what’s happened in this administration. It’s sad. It’s not the America I want to see going forward. I sincerely hope that after the election, regardless, the American people will have made a statement that they won’t tolerate this.”Issa’s remarks came in the...

In 1969, at the height of the student protests against the Vietnam war, President Nixon held a private conversation with the wife of an American serviceman while he was visiting the Pentagon. The discourse was overheard by a reporter and was recounted in Before the Fall: an Insiders View of the Pre-Watergate White House by William Safire. Nixon expressed how much he admired men like the women's husband: I have seen them. They are the greatest. You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen. The boys that are on the College campuses today are the luckiest people...

Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence By William L. Silber Bloomsbury, 454 pages, $30 On Sunday evening, Aug. 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer sell gold to other governments at $35 per ounce—the dollar would no longer be convertible into gold at all. Although no one quite realized it at the time, the era of fixed change rates was over. In memos and briefing books, Mr. Volcker, an undersecretary at Treasury, had been arguing for an end to gold convertibility. He had persuaded his boss, Treasury Secretary John Connally, and Connally, in turn, had...

Amid the triumphant success of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's successful moon-walk in July 1969, NASA and President Richard Nixon's White House breathed a heavy sigh of relief that he didn't have to deliver a speech to the nation entitled 'In Event of Moon Disaster'. The speech and a memo were prepared in the event that the two Apollo 11 astronauts did not manage to reconnect with their command module piloted by Michael Collins and could not return safely home to Earth. The memo laid out a list of instructions for President Nixon, among which was the tragic task of...

On this day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon resigns in the wake of the Watergate burglary scandal. He was the first president in American history to resign. In a televised address, Nixon, flanked by his family, announced to the American public that he would step down rather than endure a Senate impeachment trial for obstruction of justice. Since 1972, Nixon had battled increasing vociferous allegations that he knew of, and may have authorized, a botched burglary in which several men were arrested for attempting to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee...

Last week, U.S. Congressman Allen West looked the part of a college professor giving a lecture as he took the stage at the Lifelong Learning Center on the campus of Florida Atlantic College in Jupiter. At his second town hall meeting of the day, West gave a Power Point presentation without the often-distracting fanfare caused by protesters showing up wherever he appears. The room was not without distractions, however, and West handled them in a lighthearted manner, even having a little fun with the audience. But the subject matter during the presentation, and questions following, were no laughing matter.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- Seven attorneys general trying to block the federal health care law's requirement for contraception coverage saw their lawsuit dismissed Tuesday by a federal judge who said they didn't have standing to file it. U.S. District Court Judge Warren K. Urbom ruled that the states failed to prove they would suffer immediate harm once that part of the law is enacted. The Nebraska federal judge also noted that President Barack Obama's administration has agreed to work with religious groups to try to address their concerns. The lawsuit was challenging a rule in the law that requires contraception...

Reflections on the Vice-Presidency, as Mitt Romney considers his options… It is said that, just before he died, President Dwight Eisenhower said “I only made two mistakes as president, and both of them are sitting on the Supreme Court." He was mistaken. His biggest mistake was selecting Richard Nixon as a runningmate, because without those eight years as a vice president, it is inconceivable that ornery Senator Richard Nixon could have won the presidency. Only this credential from 1953 to 1961 could have facilitated that elevation. The same could be said of many presidents. The most important appointment – the...

Dave Spence was hard to miss in the Missouri capital's "Salute to America" parade. Wearing shorts in the 98-degree heat, the Republican businessman from St. Louis County zigzagged down High Street, energetically shaking hands, then jogging to catch up with the RV plastered with his billboard-sized photo. Not so noticeable was his rival in the Aug. 7 gubernatorial primary, Bill Randles of Kansas City. In jeans and a white polo shirt, Randles waved politely while walking down the center of the street alone. His wife Bev handed out candy along the curb while a volunteer followed in the couple's SUV....

    On Wednesday's Mark Levin Show:A House Congressional panel has voted to place Eric Holder in contempt of Congress regarding the Fast and Furious investigation.Also, President Obama has cited executive privilege and refuses to hand over evidence or documents regardingwhat he knew or when he knew it.Mark applauds the Republicans for standing up and delivering a blow to the tyranny that is going on, and urges them to keep at it. Mark explains the history of executive privilege, as well as the power of Congress versus the power of the Executive. It is clear that Eric Holder is at...

I’ll indulge in some measure of fiendish joy by suggesting to my left-leaning San Francisco neighbors that Barak Obama and Richard Nixon may soon share adjoining pages in history books. Disposing of partisan puffery, and being a member of no major political party, my partisanship is simply nonexistent, the country has almost witnessed the unfolding of a White House cover-up. I say this because some members of the mainstream media and the Obama re-election committee (am I being redundant?) have avoided reporting on the Fast and Furious gun running operation. For NBC Nightly News viewers, allow me to recap the...

"Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein now claim, in a Washington Post piece, that President Nixon was “far worse than we thought,” and accuse him of conducting five “wars”: against the anti-war movement, on the media, against the Democrats... The facts of Watergate have been wildly exaggerated. Neither in financing techniques nor in the gamesmanship with the other side was the Republican campaign of 1972 particularly unusual. And it was puritanical compared with what appears to have been the outright theft of the 1960 election for Kennedy over Nixon by Chicago’s Mayor Daley and Lyndon Johnson."

The White House asserted executive privilege Wednesday over some gun-trafficking-probe documents sought by congressional Republicans, throwing into uncertainty a possible vote to sanction Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt of Congress. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was meeting Wednesday morning to discuss the contempt fight. The panel's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), said the committee was evaluating the White House's assertion. In a letter to Mr. Issa, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the president had asserted the privilege to block the documents from being released, but he held out the possibility of negotiating an agreement over...

Barack Obama’s administration is the most corrupt ever to occupy the White House declared Watergate burglar and retiring radio talk star G. Gordon Liddy. With tomorrow marking the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break in, Liddy was speaking today in an interview on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio. Liddy was the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit that existed during Richard Nixon’s presidency. Klein asked Liddy: “You lived through and in fact were a part of different presidential administrations. … Looking now at Barack Obama’s previous four years, have you ever seen a White...

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Woodstein for our purposes) now claim, in a Washington Post piece, that President Nixon was “far worse than we thought,” and accuse him of conducting five “wars”: against the anti-war movement, on the media, against the Democrats, on justice, and on history. In evaluating such a volcanic farrago of pent-up charges, the facts must be arrayed in three tiers: the facts of Woodstein’s activities and revelations; the facts of the Watergate case and related controversies; and the importance of Watergate in an appreciation of the Nixon record.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: So the media is telling us it's been a bad week for President Obama. I'd rather look at it through a different prism. It has been not just a bad week, it has been a bad three-and-a-half years. Not for Obama, but for us. Every week is a bad week for America, with Barack Hussein Kardashian in the White House. Every year is a bad year for us. It has been a bad three-and-a-half years. And as much, ladies and gentlemen, as I am dedicated to the educational and informative task of teaching people about the destructive...

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, arguably the two most famous newspaper reporters in American history, did something on Sunday they haven't done in 36 years: They shared a byline in the Washington Post. Woodward and Bernstein, who are on a mini-publicity tour surrounding the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-ins, published a joint opinion essay for the Post's Outlook section about what they've learned since first reporting on the scandal: President Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign in the wake of Watergate, was "far worse than we thought."

Judy Shelton, an economist not on a university payroll, has sought to satiate this widespread curiosity in her book, Fixing The Dollar Now: Why U. S. Money Lost Its Integrity And How We Can Restore It... ... our first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton—widely thought to be, with some justification, an advocate of a strong, central government. “To emit an unfunded paper as the sign of value ought not to continue a formal part of the constitution, nor ever hereafter to be employed; being, in its nature, pregnant with abuses, and liable to be made the engine of imposition...

When I look back at history, I think it is just great how President Nixon is responsible for landing men on the moon. What's that? You say that President Kennedy is really responsible for initiating the plan years before, and that President Nixon just happened to be the guy in charge when it finally happened? Oh, ok. That's fine. I think it is just great how President Obama is responsible for killing bin Laden.

(CBS News) Chuck Colson, a former aide to Richard Nixon, evangelical leader, author and nonprofit founder, died Saturday at the age of 80.