Posted on 06/01/2005 5:55:15 AM PDT by veronica
Re: The "news" that former FBI agent Mark Felt broke the law, broke his code of ethics, broke his oath and was the main source for Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's articles that helped depose Richard Nixon, a few thoughts.
Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?
Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.
That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.
When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:
1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.
2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.
So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now -- because their future looks pretty bleak to me.
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu, and author of "Ben Stein's Diary" each month in The American Spectator.
hehe!Billy Jeff and Moniker. :)
John Kerry's brother was arrested for the same thing.
Breaking into the office of one of Kerry's opponents.
Does anyone else feel that another scandal is about to break? After listening to Rummy this morning and reporters asking him about what Felt did, if Felt was a hero or not, did Rummy suuport what he did. Something tells me they were setting him up for something down the line. Why else would you ask the SOD a question like that. I think a big story against this administration is fixin to break and I think the WP is behind it.
The Bush campaign willingly employed the Kerry mole. The Nixon campaign burglarized a private office in the Watergate complex (and several others). Burglary is a crime.
The difference is a little matter of breaking the law, then paying the burglars to keep quiet, stashing the hush money in a foreign bank, and then ordering the CIA to call off the FBI investigation because it involved activity outside US borders.
And much, much more. What a mess.
Interesting statement.
You may find this interesting.
“Did Bush have motivation? You bet,” Havill wrote. “It was Richard Nixon who urged Bush to leave a safe seat in Congress, hinting there would be a position as assistant Secretary of the Treasury waiting for him if he failed to win a Senate seat held by Ralph Yarborough. When Bush lost, Nixon reneged and asked him to take the U.N. slot instead but teased him by hinting he would be the replacement for Spiro Agnew in 1972. Instead, he was given the thankless task of heading the Republican National Committee in 1973. The elder Bush got his revenge in the end, by standing up at a cabinet meeting in August of 1974 and becoming the first person in Nixon's inner circle to ask the President to resign.
But the one thing he did that chapped my buns was instituting the 55 MPH nationwide. ARRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!
generation gap exposes the excellent job the MSM has done.
"I guess that his big problem was going to bat and showing loyalty for underlings who basically betrayed him."
We have a WINNER!
Nixon did not order the breakin. His only crime was an attempt to cover up the breakin once he was informed of it.
Ben was right under Patrick Buchanan (the chief speechwriter for Nixon), basically proofreading and polishing, and also was primarily responsible for domestic policy speeches and for polishing prepared answers for news conferences. I know someone who knows a guy who knows Doug Wead, who was a White House staffer from 1972 to just a few years ago.
While we are at it, may John Dean rot in HELL!!
Morally and principally, it is one and the same.
Do you know any history other then what you were taugh by the main stream media?
Were you alive during this time?
Do you remember the total control the main stream media had on "the news"?
Do you know Proportionality?
The press weakened the President at at time we still had a lot of enemies. By the time he resigned, the United States was a paper tiger on the world stage. From President Nixon, we got President Ford and then the Mayaguez incident where we could not even perform a simple military operation against some pirates at sea. Following President Ford we had four years of President Carter. If it was not for Watergate we would not have had Carter and I doubt if Iran would have took over our Embassy.
We are all still too close to make good judgement about Watergate, and the role of the media in bringing down a President, and so I will leave it up to history to decide if the punishment inflicted on Nixon for the crimes Nixon was accused of (and which could have been condemed by a censure from Congress) was worth the price this nation paid.
Fantastic line! Isn't it fitting that everything the Dims try to accuse prominent GOP'ers of, their sacred cows have actually done!!
Scum, thy name is the Democratic party!
Huh???
What is that about?
bttt
I am always leery of using the WP as a source for anything especially anything to do with Watergate. I read the article and nowhere does it state that CREEP influenced the selection of the Dem nominee nor does it mention McGovern. What is does say is that,
During their Watergate investigation, federal agents established that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions had been set aside to pay for an extensive undercover campaign aimed at discrediting individual Democratic presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns.
"Intelligence work" is normal during a campaign and is said to be carried out by both political parties. But federal investigators said what they uncovered being done by the Nixon forces is unprecedented in scope and intensity.
All this article proves is that the GOP engaged in operations research against possible Dem opponents, the same way they do against Rep candidates. Informed of the general contents of this article, The White House referred all comment to The Committee for the Re-election of the President. A spokesman there said, "The Post story is not only fiction but a collection of absurdities."
In the past, I thought that Mr. Wallace harmed Mr. Humphrey more, but a poster here challenged that view a while back. In looking at the 1964, 1968, and 1972 presidential results, here's what I find:
You decide to use these three elections for analysis, but why not add 1976 to the mix to establish a longer term trend. Except for the 1948 election, Goldwater was an aberration as far as the South was concerned. With few exceptsions, the Solid South was a political reality for the Dems from 1876 to 1964. The 1964 civil rights act had an impact. It is problematic to extrapolate that impact to 1968.
In 1976 Jimmy Carter swept the South except for Virginia and added border states like Missouri and Kentucky. In 1980 Carter lost the south except for GA.
One can argue that the four states that both Mr. Goldwater and Mr. Wallace won would have reverted to the Dems in 1968, but I think that it's persuasive to make the opposite argument: that it is likely that Mr. Nixon would have taken those four states in 1968. They were Republican in 1964 (during the worst shellacking of a Republican ever) and were again Republican in 1972.
You can't view Wallace's impact just on the South. He did well in certain key states outside the South that usually went Dem up to that point. Nixon won in Illinois (a state that could go either way) by 3%(Wallace 8.5% of the vote); Missouri by 1% (Wallace had 11.3% of the vote); and New Jersey by 2% (Wallace had 9.1% of the vote). Nixon won California with 3% margin and almost 7% of the vote went to Wallace. Humphrey won NY by only 5% of the vote and didn't get over 50%. I strongly believe that Humphrey would have won SC, NC, and Tenn without Wallace being in the race.
Their vote for Mr. Wallace may be seen as an aberration of that trend (accentuated since then, except when a Southern Democrat runs).
Not really. ALA, Miss, GA, AK and LA went for Stevenson in 1952 and again for Stevenson in 1956 (except for LA). They went for JFK in 1960 except for Miss (uncommited electors) and partially ALA. In 1996 Dole took AL, Miss, GA, SC, NC, and VA against a Southern Democrat. In 1992 Bush 41 won Miss, ALA, SC, NC, and VA over Clinton.
Mr. Nixon did take South Carolina in 1968, but so did Mr. Goldwater in 1964.
Nixon took SC with 38% of the vote against 32% for Wallace and 29.6% for Humphrey. In 1964 Goldwater won 59% to Johnson's 41%, which was payback for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1976 Carter received 56%. In 1980 Carter received only 41%. In 1992 Bush beat Clinton 48% to 40%. In 1996, Dole beat Clinton. There are plenty of variables, but a pattern for SC only starts to emerge in 1980.
As for Tennessee, Virginia, and Florida, Mr. Goldwater ran much stronger in these states than in the country as a whole. Had the national race not been as lopsided as it was, it is quite possible that Mr. Goldwater would have taken these states. In Florida, he took nearly 49% of the vote against President Johnson.
That is pure speculation. What we do know is that Johnson won nationally with 61% of the popular vote and a winning electoral college majority of 434. It was a landslide by any measure. FLA went Dem in 1976 and 1996 and came within a wisker of going Dem in 2000.
Even in North Carolina, Mr. Goldwater ran about 4% ahead of his national numbers. In a close race in 1968, it isn't at all a stretch that Mr. Nixon may have won a two-man race against Mr. Humphrey in these states.
Goldwater lost NC 56% to 44%. It wasn't close. In 1968, Nixon had 39.5%, Wallace 31%, and Humphrey 29%. May is the operative word.
Like I said, I used to think that Mr. Wallace hurt Mr. Humphrey much more than Mr. Nixon. But in looking at the state-by-state results, I think there's a strong argument that Mr. Nixon may have actually won a clear majority of the vote in 1968 without Mr. Wallace, and would have had a modestly larger victory in the Electoral College.
We will agree to disagree. Nixon won a national election in 1968 by 500,000 votes. A Southern Democrat, George Wallace, formed a third party and ran strongly in the South. He pulled almost 14% of the total vote nationally and had significant support outside the South. I compare Wallace to Perot in terms of his impact on the election. In Perot's case, Clinton was helped by his participation in the race.
All? I don't know. More than one previous president? I think so. I've read more than once that in some sense, Mr. Nixon got caught in the middle of a change in what was and wasn't acceptable. Or maybe, he just got caught, period.
I was just referring to your statement, ""I also don't think that Mr. Nixon's minions did anything different than previous presidents."
Each man avoided being convicted of felonies, yet each man received some punishment for his actions. The difference is that Mr. Clinton was not forced from office for his illegal activities. In my view, the punishment received by Mr. Clinton - pay a fine, lose the law license - was less than what Mr. Nixon received - forced to resign the presidency. Others may differ.
The difference is that Clinton received judicial punishment. Bill Clinton was charged with lying under oath about his affair with Lewinsky to gain advantage in a sexual harassment case brought by Paula Jones, a case he later settled by paying Paula Jones $850,000. A Federal judge found Clinton also to be in contempt of court for lying in a deposition and ordered him to pay a $90,000 fine. This contempt citation led to disbarment proceedings to remove his law license. To avoid these Clinton surrendered his law license and is no longer allowed to practice law.
Nixon resigned under pressure, the first to do so in our history. Clinton was impeached, the first time for an elected President. He was impeached for: Article 1: Perjury before Independent Counsel Ken Starr's grand jury; Article 2; Perjury in the Paula Jones civil case; Article 3: Obstruction of Justice related to the Jones case; and Article 4: Abuse of Power by making perjurious statements to Congress in his answers to the 81 questions posed by the Judiciary Committee.
But what was proved legally is different from what we all saw with our own eyes, in each case.
What we saw in the case of Nixon was a witch hunt and lynching with a disproportionate reaction and punishment for a President's loyalty to his subordinates. Clinton was not punished appropriately for his more serious crimes and has been rewarded and fawned over by the MSM ever since finishing his term of office. Nixon became a political pariah until he died. There is no moral equivalency between these two men. And certainly, Nixon's performance in office dwarfs Clinton's pitiful achievements as President.
Obstruction of justice is a crime, period.
BTT
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